IBM said it has cut operational carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by nearly 40% since 2005, putting it ahead of schedule to reach that amount by 2025. And nearly half of its electricity consumed last year was from renewable sources.

Those stats were part of the technology giant's 30th annual corporate environmental report. Data in the report covers greenhouse gas emissions goals that were recorded on IBM-owned or leased facilities, such as IBM data centers that are managed by a third-party where IBM does not procure the energy or control the operations of the buildings. It includes conservation, pollution prevention, environmental design, battery development, and environmental impacts from supply chains, with IBM specifically calling out its energy conservation and carbon reduction practices.

The report notes that 47% of IBM’s global electricity consumption last year was generated from renewable sources. That nearly matches the 55% goal the vendor set out to achieve by 2025.

Last year the company implemented 1,660 energy conservation projects across 230 locations globally, reducing its total energy use by 3.2% for the year. This spared 47,000 metric tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere – a number, according to the report, that is equivalent to removing over 10,000 passenger vehicles from the road during the year.

Data center reformations at more than 150 locations included 700 completed projects that resulted in $9.1 million in savings, accounting for more than half of the company’s total amount conserved. Sixty-three percent of the savings was achieved by refreshing IT equipment with more energy-efficient technologies and increasing consolidation and virtualization of IT workloads. 

Savings from data centers also came from virtualizing cooling efficiency to reduce the energy demand of cooling fans. IBM deployed software tools and automation to match fans to IT system utilization levels and their heat output.

Overall, the report notes that since 1990, the vendor has conserved 7.7 million megawatt-hours of electricity. IBM also avoided 4.5 million metric tons of CO2 emissions, and saved $646 million as part of its conservation efforts. 

IBM President Jim Whitehurst in a blog post credits the company’s success to its internal Environmental Management System (EMS) as it “engages people whose day-to-day job is not about the environment per se, but whose decisions and work impact the environment. It institutionalizes environmental responsibility into the fabric of our company’s culture.” IBM's EMS is an internal code of conduct to address corporate environmental directives.

IBM launched its Green Horizons Initiative  in 2014, harnessing the power of advanced machine learning, IoT, and artificial intelligence (AI) to fight air pollution and climate change. In this capacity, AI can analyze environmental data and create automated weather and pollution forecasts. Green Horizons has been helping governments, utility companies, and factories improve their relationships with the environment in China, Japan, South Africa, the U.K., and the U.S. since 2015.

In recent years IBM has worked with Plastic Bank to develop a blockchain-powered system to convert plastic into a new kind of currency that users can exchange for goods such as food or diapers. The company also partnered with Daimler to use quantum computing to accelerate the development of next-generation batteries.