How do you think Yahoo! will go carbon neutral?

Question

I read in a question the yahoo had annouced it was going carbon neutral. How do think Yahoo! will do it?

Answer 1

With engines that run on... carbon perhaps.

Answer 2

By Eric Auchard

Mon May 14, 11:13 AM ET



SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) aims to wield its power as the biggest U.S. Internet media company to encourage millions of consumers to take basic steps to help the environment as part of its corporate push to confront global warming.

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The Sunnyvale, California-based company is on Monday introducing Yahoo Green, an online education program (http://green.yahoo.com/) that will offer users the latest environmental news, consumer tips and ways to be personally and socially active in combating climate change.

Last month, Yahoo said it would become "carbon neutral" as a company by the end of 2007, a pledge to reduce emissions by conserving energy or by buying pollution credits to neutralize, or offset, one's energy use.

Yahoo has joined a growing number of big U.S. companies that are putting corporate resources behind efforts to cut carbon greenhouse gases in business operations and to push for policy changes with local and national government.

Company officials believe that the greatest role Yahoo can play is to encourage personal change among its huge consumer following of 500 million monthly users of Yahoo services worldwide. The program starts in the United States, but will eventually be expanded to international markets, they said.

"What is the biggest way for us to have an impact? The biggest way by far is to get this message out to half a billion people," Yahoo Co-Founder David Filo said in an interview.

The Yahoo Green site allows consumers to choose from a menu of actions to reduce their personal carbon emissions and see the collective impact of everyone who participates. It asks users to change light bulbs, take public transport, reuse shopping bags, properly inflate tires, recycle and more.

"We want to make it easy for consumers to do something as well as help them build enduring habits that can truly make a difference. We believe many small individual actions can add up to significant change," Filo said.

Like other companies, Yahoo has sought to cut energy use in its offices and encourages telecommuting and public transportation use by its employees. It also replaced incandescent light bulbs on Yahoo marketing billboards with energy-efficient compact fluorescent lights.

In Yahoo's operations, the biggest energy issue is the massive computer datacenters used to deliver services ranging from e-mail to news to photos and videos via more than 100,000 powerful server computers. The company uses renewable power, hydroelectric energy and passive cooling to reduce energy use.

Answer 3

team up with Google

Answer 4

Going carbon neutral means offsetting your carbon emissions, it's different to carbon trading.

The usual route to offsetting is through tree planting schemes.  It works like this, a person or organisaion calculates their carbon footprint (amount of CO2 emissions) then plants a sufficient number of trees to counter this.

Trees sequester (grab) CO2 from the atmosphere and the right type of tree planted in the right place can remove 3 to 5 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere during it's lifetime.

For an organisation the size of Yahoo to go carbon neutral will mean a substantial tree planting programme.  A great many trees will be required (possibly millions of them) so maybe they're thinking about planting a forest or two.

Answer 5

YAHOO! can't go carbon neutral...there isn't such a thing.  And those carbon off-sets are just another way to get you to waste more money!