VMware Joins the European Green Digital Coalition
By Nicola Acutt
In 25 years of operations, sustainability has always been a core strand in our corporate DNA. Our 2030 Agenda for building a more sustainable, equitable and secure future for everyone is a key expression of our belief in a better a future, and I am delighted with the progress that everyone at VMware has made at every level of the company to deliver on these goals.
Now I’m equally delighted to announce our latest commitment to sustainability. VMware has become a member of the European Green Digital Coalition (EGDC). This coalition of nearly 40 IT companies is supported by the European Commission, the European Parliament and a number of corporate partners, with the aim of harnessing the emission-reducing potential of digital solutions.
All EGDC members recognize that the IT sector is a key combatant in the fight against climate change and commit to making their contribution to the success of the green digital transformation of the EU and beyond. This is very much in line with our own actions on climate change and our own approach to sustainability. Like all members, we “recognize that urgent action must be taken and believe that solutions exist for a sustainable future,” but we are also “ready to be part of these solutions and to lead by example.”
Joe Baguley, our Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for EMEA, also believes we are joining EDGC at a crucial moment, as European countries come to terms with their dependency on fossil fuels and an energy crisis that sees some consumers facing unit prices 15 times higher than US customers.
“We have complex and interconnected environmental challenges to solve,” he says. “And as a community, we have a big responsibility to reduce energy consumption, resource use and overall emissions. The need has never been more pressing for the broader IT ecosystem to come together and accelerate much-needed change.”
Measurement and collaboration are the twin pillars of success
The urgency of our climate crisis is such that practical solutions and effective policy-development are a priority. Fortunately, the EDGC is not just another talking shop. It is looking initially to provide science-based methods that will help companies in power generation, construction, manufacturing, agricultural and transport sectors—as well as those developing solutions for smart cities—to estimate the net environmental impact of their chosen digital solutions.
VMware has developed sophisticated tools to measure and track improvements in key areas of resource use. We will bring these kinds of monitoring and measurement techniques to the EDGC to ensure the digital solutions we develop deliver real quantifiable results.
For example, the VMware Green Score helps organizations understand where their own datacenters are in terms of decarbonization or sustainability more broadly. They can then identify direct and indirect emissions, measure improvements and track progress in key areas like workload and hardware efficiencies, use of physical resources, virtualization rates and type of energy used.
Of course, real environmental action goes beyond the datacenter. Sustainability practices around clean demand, lean operations and green supply apply equally to all areas of business operations. That is why joining an organization like the EGDC is so important. It allows for the exchange of ideas, expertise and information, and generates opportunities to collaborate and co-create effective solutions to the pre-eminent challenge of our times.
An opportunity to widen our impact
Joining the EDGC also represents a logical next step in our sustainability journey as we make progress towards our goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions for our own operations and supply chain by 2030. We are proud to have achieved 100 percent renewably sourced power for the operations of our global facilities and co-located data centers continuously since 2019. VMware is also enabling our customers to achieve their own sustainability goals. For example, the VMware Zero Carbon Committed initiative helps our customers reduce the environmental impact of their digital infrastructure by connecting them with VMware Cloud Provider partners who are committed to achieving 100% renewable energy-powered data centers or carbon neutrality by 2030. This includes major VMware Cloud Provider partners like Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure among many others.
Our progress was recently recognized on the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) Climate Change A-List and as a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices—one of the world’s leading benchmarks for sustainability leadership—for the third year in a row. We’ve also been acknowledged by Newsweek as one of America’s Most Responsible Companies of 2023, and we were the only company to receive a perfect score for addressing environmental concerns.
Now as a member of EDGC we will be working with like-minded organizations to develop green digital solutions for an even wider circle of businesses across all commercial sectors—and, as a result, for society as a whole.
I look forward to updating you on our progress.
