At IBM, we believe that technologies, such as artificial intelligence, are critical enablers to leverage sustainability. Few companies have the history, technology capabilities and the industry-leading research to achieve and enable others to set, operationalize, and meet sustainability targets.
Our mission in this space is to create better pathways to conserve natural resources, reduce pollution, and minimize climate-related risks.
Embedding sustainability into everything we do
IBM has a long-track history of environmental commitments, starting with our first corporate policy on environmental affairs, enacted in 1971. Currently, we have 21 sustainability goals that address energy, biodiversity, climate change, waste, pollution, renewables, and emissions – including achieving operational net zero emissions and procuring 90% of the electricity IBM consumes worldwide from renewable sources by 2030. Today, we are innovating and executing environmental sustainability initiatives with hybrid cloud and emerging AI technologies across IBM’s operations, supply chain, products, and services.
Making a lasting, positive impact in communities around the world
We also promote environmental justice programs like the IBM Sustainability Accelerator, enabling organizations and communities to tackle environmental issues. Through this pro bono social impact program, we leverage IBM technologies, such as AI, and expertise to enhance and scale non-profits and government organization initiatives around the world with a different topic each year, including agriculture, clean energy, water management and resilient cities thus far. For example, we just launched with the United Nations Development Programme two new interactive models to forecast energy access and model energy equity around the world, and anyone can try them out and access advanced AI technology.
Enabling our ecosystem to accelerate their sustainability journey
While 82% of executives agree that high-quality data and transparency are necessary to achieve sustainability outcomes, only about 4 in 10 organizations can automatically source sustainability data
IBM’s technology and consulting services makes data visible and actionable by leveraging AI and automation for scale and speed across business functions, helping clients achieve profit and purpose. We accelerate clients’ business objectives and sustainability goals; increase productivity; reduce costs, waste and emissions, while meeting regulatory requirements. IBM works with clients across industries by partnering with them to co-create innovative solutions, such as the Flex Platform with Andel Energi and a new AI solution for wildlife conservation with WWF, to address sustainability challenges and drive impact.
For us, trustworthy data is the lifeblood of sustainable change. AI will play a fundamental role in helping everyone gather and curate their data more efficiently to equip them to make better strategic and tactical decisions. By applying AI across operations, we can get closer to achieving our sustainability goals in the fastest, most cost-efficient way. From working with NASA to release one of the most advanced AI models for climate and weather to empowering companies and communities with technology and skills, that’s what at IBM we are trying to achieve.
In addition, we have a commitment to doing business with suppliers who conduct themselves with high standards of ethical, environmental, and social responsibility. We support this commitment by setting specific environmental requirements for our suppliers and by partnering with them to drive continual improvement. We have a track record of setting precedents with environmental commitments for over 50 years and we will continue working through solutions, expertise, research, advocacy, and coalitions.
