As three big US ICT companies join RE100 this week, Lynelle Cameron, President and CEO of the Autodesk Foundation and Senior Director of Sustainability at Autodesk, blogs about designing a low carbon future.
Autodesk continues to take bold steps toward climate action. In the past few months, we committed to:
- Power our business with 100% renewable energy by 2020
- Reduce short-lived climate pollutant emissions in our operations
- Remove commodity-driven deforestation from our supply chain
- Increase our efforts to advocate for climate policy at the city, state, and federal level including signing the White House American Business Act on Climate, supporting California’s progressive bills to boost renewable energy and decrease petroleum use, and sponsoring Envision: America.
We have also recently committed to include climate change information in our mainstream financial reports, and just this week we hosted our first carbon neutral Autodesk University for 10,000 customers in Las Vegas thanks to a partnership with Meridian Lightweight Technologies, a customer of ours.
As significantly, years ago we set one of the first science-based emissions reduction target (C-FACT) and made the methodology open-source and widely available so that other companies use and improve upon it.
But the actions of any one company is not enough to impact the kind of change we need.
There has never been a better time in history for businesses to collaborate with each other – to inspire each other, share successes, and join coalitions like RE100, and others - each of which we are proud to join.
We know all too well that climate change cannot be solved by one country, one company, one sector or one discipline. It is the ultimate systemic challenge that requires creativity, imagination and innovation across the private sector, government sector and the public at large.
Our vision at Autodesk is to engage all our customers – leading architecture, engineering, and design firms as well as local and national governments to design a livable future for billions of people.
We have the science, tools, and knowledge at our fingertips to design a low-carbon future – one that is more efficient, is not dependent on fossil fuels, and is both resilient and adaptive.
We will continue to:
- Provide the world’s most advanced software and services to help customers design, operate, and make the triple bottom line business cases for sustainable buildings, water, and transportation projects.
- Invest in and support people, start-ups, and organizations that are designing climate solutions.
- Prioritize education so the next generation can more easily design within the limits of the planet and address climate change.
Why are we doing this? We each have a unique role to play in contributing to a low-carbon future. At Autodesk we are more committed than ever to engage our customer base to take bold climate action. Our customers are the ones designing the buildings, bridges, roads, even entire cities of the future.
The ripple effects of a relatively small design software company, working with customers to impact the lives of billions of people inspires us to action every day.
With a bold international climate treaty coming out of COP21, designing a low carbon future is within reach.
Click here to find out more about Autodesk's commitment to 100% renewable power.