Verizon at Home

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NOTE: The blog below was written by our Chief Sustainability Officer James Gowen and posted on Verizon's Responsibility Blog. You can read the complete blog here.

50% off!

It sounds great when you’re standing online waiting to pay. It sounded good to us, too.

Earlier this week we announced our goal to cut in half our carbon intensity – the amount of energy needed to move data across Verizon’s networks -- by 2020. We’re using our 2009 carbon intensity level as the benchmark and the starting point for our goal.

First launched last year, carbon intensity is a good efficiency measurement for us when you consider that our business is growing rapidly as everything gets connected and the use and demand for data – particularly in the form of video -- continues to skyrocket.

This is important for our shareholders and the communities we serve but it has broader implications as well. According to a recent report by PriceWaterhouse Coopers, carbon emissions fell along with the recession and industrial output but that changed in 2010 carbon intensity across the globe climbed. (Get the full report online.)

So How Are We Doing?

Over the last two years, we’ve been able to cut our carbon intensity by just over 30%. Congrats to many, many people at Verizon, our partners and vendors! But like a marathon, the tougher part comes toward the end. We offer a convenient snapshot of our efforts in our annual report.

Quick note about this year’s report, it’s the first time we’ve combined our Annual Report, traditionally a financial reporting tool, with our Corporate Responsibility Report. This integrated reporting reinforces the fact that we’re rethinking our business, and restructuring ourselves to address big social issues like health care and energy.

Lowell McAdam, our chairman and CEO, took part in an interview at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit held in New York this week, during which he announced our carbon intensity goal and some of the areas of opportunity in the energy space.

Take a look at the video on the Bloomberg website and stay tuned for more information and green news!

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When calculating your carbon footprint, do you add to that footprint the power consumed by all the ONTs installed in consumer homes? Where that power used to originate from the CO. Even so, it is probably alot less than what was required to be sent over the copper. But as a total it should be included in your cost of service.