Ciena updated its sustainability strategy to include deeper scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions and an intensity-based scope 3 emissions reduction goal, both of which were approved by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

The networking vendor claims to be on track to reach carbon neutrality for its scope 1, scope 2 and certain scope 3 emissions categories by the end of 2023. With that achievement on its way, Ciena decided to set more impactful emissions targets that attempt to go beyond carbon neutrality.

Specifically, Ciena committed to a 2030 goal of eliminating 80.6% of its scope 1 and scope 2 emissions and 71.3% of its scope 3 emissions per unit of capacity shipped, in Gb/s, from 2019 levels. And while the decimals may seem an odd choice, it's thanks to the specific formula SBTi uses to approve targets.

"We chose to keep the decimal instead of rounding the number to keep it consistent with our formal certification," Beth Hunter, Ciena's director of sustainability communication, told SDxCentral.

Ciena began the process of measuring its scope 3 emissions last year, which included GHG emissions associated with the company's purchased goods and services, fuel- and energy-related activities, upstream transportation and distribution, waste generated in operations, business travel, employee commuting, use of sold products and end-of-life treatment of sold products.

This measurement process provided a "really full picture" of the networking vendor's impact in 2019, 2020 and 2021, Hunter said.

The company's next step was aligning its environmental impact strategy with the Paris Agreement's goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5-degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial level. For Ciena, that meant working with a third party to submit its proposed climate goals to the SBTi.

The choice of a 2019 base year to compare future progress against stems from the requirements of a science-based target. Many enterprises choose 2019, the last pre-pandemic year (as opposed to 2020), because standard processes and ways of doing business were less disrupted that year. In the event Ciena reaches these goals, "and if there's an opportunity to get more aggressive, we'll continue to evaluate that," she added.

"We're really excited to be embarking on these targets. It's something that's really important to all of us here at Ciena. Our people really value sustainability [and] they are really engaged in it," Hunter said.

Scope 3 or supply chain emissions tend to be the hardest for a business to measure, report and reduce – and Ciena is no exception.

According to Hunter, customers' use of Ciena products, like networking components, represents the largest share of the vendor's scope 3 emissions. And Ciena's continued release of new products is driving the sustainability team to keep those environmental aspirations front and center.

As the vendor continues "to build and ship our products," the pressure is on to reduce customers' network energy use, produce more efficient products and use less material in doing so, she explained.

Apart from use of sold products, the global company's operational waste is one of the most difficult pieces of scope 3 to measure. It typically requires working with various vendors to gather information and is "very municipally driven," Hunter said. Despite the challenge, "we're putting a process in place so that we're properly auditing our waste and we know exactly where we're at," she added.