The Internet and IT have surpassed air transport as one of the world’s major CO2 offenders.
Following the example of more than 2,400 companies from 60 countries worldwide, the meeting and event portal Event Planner Spain has gone carbon neutral with CO2neutralwebsite.com, a voluntary initiative running since January 2009, which has mapped emissions and developed a CO2 neutralization programme through the creation of new renewable energy sources and several CO2 reduction projects, carbon offsetting being independently audited by Deloitte.
Although the advent of the Internet and IT has had a very positive impact mainly through the savings achieved on paper, printing and land mail, the emissions that they produce now exceed those of air transport, due to energy consumption by users and the servers hosting the millions of existing websites; a phenomenon that will continue to grow exponentially, thus generating an ever larger carbon footprint. Hence the importance of heightening the awareness of Internet and IT companies, as well as the millions of people who surf the Web and use new technologies on a daily basis, about the importance of reducing their footprint through initiatives like CO2neutralwebsite.com.
A Danish public/private joint venture – between the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation and Oestjysk Innovation – CO2neutralwebsite.com requires that all participants totally neutralize the emissions produced by the use of their websites (based on traffic figures), as it does not believe in "semi-green" solutions. The company has invested a large amount of time and resources in building trust, conducting audits and increasing its visibility. This evidently comes at a cost for participants, but the idea is to ensure that their websites become entirely CO2 neutral, thereby conferring value-added to its "CO2 neutral website" icon.
To show its strong commitment to environmental protection, Event Planner Spain has decided to participate in this initiative, offsetting emissions produced by its dedicated server and the more than 1,000,000 page views the site receives every month.
Video in Danish
