Episode 69 - Big Tech carbon emissions by the millions with Cathleen Berger

Cathleen Berger:

That's not how accounting works. Like it's okay if you're trying to mitigate and reduce, and if what you can't avoid, you then invest in reductions. But it's not okay to do that financial accounting thing where the balance sheet says zero, but the actual emissions and the consequences we suffer as humans haven't changed, but that's still unfortunately very hard to read in the Scope Three emissions.

Gaël Duez: 

Hello everyone. Welcome to Green IO. I'm Gaël Duez, and in this podcast we empower responsible technologists to build a greener digital world, one byte at a time, twice a month on a Tuesday. Our guests from across the globe share insights, tools, and alternative approaches enabling people within the tech sector and beyond to boost digital sustainability.

Big tech companies emit more greenhouse gases than many countries around the world, and the biggest, such as Apple, Microsoft, Alibaba, and Alphabet, emit more than Uruguay, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, or Tanzania, for instance. Actually, if we sum up the emissions, they emit more than the highly industrialized Switzerland.

They all claim to be sustainable, to have climate change as a top priority and to aim for ambitious emission restrictions. Someone has been doing the tracking for several years of these claims and these numbers, and this person is Cathleen Berger. You might know her as the former head of sustainability at Mozilla, or as a lecturer at the Friedrich Sheila University, or now at the head of office for research and policy for the deputy chair on the digital committee of the German Parliament.

But we're not here to talk about these jobs. We are here to talk about what she does in her spare time. Cathleen crunches ESG data and produces a yearly report comparing numbers and trends in Big Tech, and this is what I'm delighted to discuss with her today. Cathleen, welcome to the show. 

Cathleen Berger: 

Thank you so much for having me.

Gaël Duez: 

So I have to ask the question, but why not piano? Why not theatre or a walk in the in, in the park? You know, how come that working on the ESG report from all these big tech companies? Became such a hobby and a very beneficial hobby for us, I would say. But still, I'm curious? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Who says I don't do the other things also?

Gaël Duez: 

I hope so.

Cathleen Berger: 

No, but honestly, crunching data, it's, it's this weird thing where we are all wired differently. And for me, it started when I realized that it's also sort of like procrastination. If you have to think about political things and sometimes the numbers just don't lie. So I've been working in the tech industry on digital policies for over 15 years, and there's always progress.

There's always innovation, there's always new things happening. But then, when I learned how to read ESG data, I was like, but is there really? And somehow I just can't let it go. So I keep looking into them every year, admittedly, it's getting gloomier and gloomier. 

Gaël Duez: 

So that's something that you shared very openly in August, when usually you release your analysis at the very first time, you were very pessimistic. Can you maybe elaborate a bit on why? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah, sure. I think that was maybe going back like slight history lesson. There was a time just after the pandemic when I felt that with ESG reporting, like the environmental, social and governance reporting that most big companies have to do, not just in tech, but all over that we were seeing sort of a trend towards something positive. There was this market of if you wanna work in a big company, you're sort of looking for. How do they stand in their corporate responsibility values? So looking for talent for big tech. Tech also meant finding ways to appeal to them. And the environment was very big because the Fridays for Future movement was also like gaining strength, et cetera. So you would see it in the data. Progress. And it was really promising. Like, oh, they've, they've made those claims. They're gonna reduce their emissions. They're really gonna invest. They're not just gonna grow their profit, but it's gonna get better. And so we had this one year where actually more companies were on track than not. And ever since it's been going down, and this, this past year with data from 2024 was particularly bleak. Like I was reading it. And I really actually struggled for almost two weeks before I published it because I was like, oh, need to get out of this funk. But the whole marketing reports, and by now they really are marketing reports. They're like 200 pages of how fantastic anything artificial intelligence is and how much that's gonna save the world, and everything's gonna be green, et cetera, et cetera. And then you look into the numbers. They're just all failing to meet their targets, including their own targets, the ones they've set themselves and that was, yeah, very frustrating. 

Gaël Duez: 

And do you have an explanation for these gloomy perspectives? 

Cathleen Berger:

I mean, it's, it's all connected to the geopolitical climate also in a way, right? So we do know there's a, a big hype going on in artificial intelligence as being the number one technology to invest in if you wanna succeed in our current capitalist growth market. And there's also competition happening in terms of like, we see that in the EU, I think where both of us are based. This whole debate around digital sovereignty. In order to make that happen, we need to invest in gigafactories for artificial intelligence. We need to find ways to challenge and compete with the hyperscalers that are Microsoft, Amazon, et cetera. There's this trend of like, if we don't do that, if we don't invest, if we don't grow whatever we need for the technology to grow, we're gonna lose out and that's gonna be harmful. And that, that discourse is so strong that we forget asking, but what does the tech do apart from maybe, maybe, and that's, that's really a, maybe, helping us with that. So the, the footprints of it, and that's the part that I'm interested in, it's the, like, can we grow to grow or are there maybe natural limits also to the electricity that's available, particularly clean electricity that's available, or land resources or other resources that go into building the tech, because it's not some floaty thing in the air, but it has a physical infrastructure. That definitely gets put by the wayside in the current geopolitical climate to an extent that is worrisome. 

Gaël Duez: 

Yeah, this is a trend in feedback that we receive from pretty much all over the world. That's interesting that you connected to post-pandemic and do this bit of a rewinding for the past five years. Now, if we would like to go a bit more into the nitty gritty of these numbers, I would start with a very basic question. Do they now seriously follow the greenhouse gas protocol? I mean, can, can we compare these numbers, at least for carbon emissions?

Cathleen Berger: 

To an extent. So it's gotten better in terms of that they're more complete in what they report, once you go into the appendices, you won't find it in the reports themselves. Usually it's either separate documents that are in a PDF on a website somewhere, or really on page 250, 300, what have you, where the data tables are shared. 

Gaël Duez: 

Oh, you remember? You remember it by heart. That's a great question.

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah, like you know what search terms, terms to go for, in order to dig through those PDF documents. So we have more numbers than we used to. Like in the very beginning, we would basically get like the emission intensity per revenue, like per million revenue. This is how many emissions we have, and the Chinese companies are still reporting that way. So Alibaba and Tencent are still more guarded and not as transparent in terms of what their actual absolute emissions are. But with the other tech companies, we see more data. But as you also see in the, in the post that I, they wrote up, Amazon hasn't published theirs. Meta hasn't published theirs, and that's also very common that we are already looking back for a year in the data. So this is all about what happened in 2024, and we're already at the end of September '25, and we haven't even seen any tables from these two companies. So how, how useful is that information if another year has passed before you can start acting up on anything? Right? So that's a question. And then the other pet peeve that I have is that most of that data isn't, machine readable, and that makes it super hard to compare and keep track. So it's very manual labor. To go through and see what's changed year-over-year because they also keep changing methodology. 'Cause for digital products, they're still, we have the GHG protocol, but it's not as precise and not as detailed as it needs to be for these companies to be really comparable with one another.

Gaël Duez: 

Okay. So. It's better. But actually, if I say in quoting the, the number you mentioned that Apple claims to have emitted for 15.3 million tons, CO2, and Google, 15 point 19. It's more an order of magnitude, around 15 both, than exact precise numbers that could be perfectly compared?

Cathleen Berger:

Yes.

Gaël Duez: 

And could you give us an example on where actually the methodology are not aligned and what you were referring to for digital products and why do we miss, clear guidelines?

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah, sure. So, like one example, I also, Alibaba already mentioned the Chinese companies are a bit different, but Alibaba claims to have reduced by some 20% or so in their report if you just read the copy, because if you see the data that they report, they say they have 10.2 million in 2024, and then '23 it was 12.3. But the, the only reason that that reduction is there is because they sold off some subsidies of theirs. And then they deducted the companies and the emission that those have had over the years from their own reporting. So they reduced their footprint excluding companies they sold in 2024 from historical data. That's ironic. Like that's super ironic. 

Gaël Duez: 

That's super ironic indeed. And that's something that I would believe is almost forbidden, that you need to make the data comparable year-on-year or so. I mean, for financial data you can go to jail if you do something like this. Basically you have to, to re reprocess the data to make them comparable. So is it something, allowed in the GSG or it's just that it takes the liberty to do so? 

Cathleen Berger: 

I wouldn't know how that's handled in China. I'm not familiar with the laws. But, it's definitely a question mark that I have, whether that's legal or not. If you dig into the footnotes, I like, I'm not kidding you, it is a footnote. There they correct what, the actual historical data would be without those two entities that they sold, which then makes it clear that they grew and didn't reduce. So then the, the misleading information is the marketing copy that still claims that they had absolute reductions when the reduction was just selling off companies rather than actually reducing anything. So it's a very, I would say, gray zone, but certainly from a consumer perspective, misleading, like there is no other term for that. It is absolutely misleading. And maybe going like, I can give you another example from Meta, which I also always find, like it's a hard one to read because they, there's a lot of marketing and how they invest in the community, which projects they invest in, where they reduce the emissions and why it's so important to also, engage in policy work around climate, et cetera. But for example, their data isn't comparable to the other tech companies because the so-called “Scope Three” emissions. So Scope One is what you control and own any production of energy. Scope Two, what you purchase, like electricity and heating, for example. And then Scope Three, anything in your value chain. And Meta excludes a large bunch of Scope Three emissions, but they don't consider them, too important to the success of their operations. But that's not how it works. If you wanna be transparent, you assess all of them. Even if you have to estimate parts of it, you still get a sense of what they are, but they don't even account for it. So there's just complete categories missing. 

Gaël Duez: 

Wow. So hold on, because actually I was about to ask you the question you're anticipating my question. This is great. About, is Scope Three still an issue or not? I was expecting you to tell me, no, not anymore. Now that everyone reports properly, Scope One, Two, and Three. It was not the case a few years ago, but actually, so we do have an issue still with Scope Three that...

Cathleen Berger: 

Yes

Gaël Duez:

Some companies, they exclude part of Scope Three because they claim that it doesn't have any significant impact on their operation. But how come, can you provide us maybe one example for Meta? Is it like, I don't know, when they rent a car or something like this? They don't consider it, impactful enough? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah it, it keeps changing. But like events is one of those, where there's a, a distinction in the marketing speech of is the event a Meta 'core' event or is it an event from the community associated with that where I'm like, well, if it, if your logo is somewhere like, excuse me, you're a very powerful company, it's your event. Stuff like that is included. There's some discussion around like business travel by now they do. But they used to not account for hotels and they used to not account for trains, so they just tracked flights. And then they had this whole thing we invested in carbon free plane petrol or something, like some weird fuel thing. And so they reduced those emissions. And I was reading this and I was like, so you're flying and then afterwards you're purchasing something that claims to be petrol for planes that is carbon neutral, however that's supposed to work. And because you purchase this, you're not accounting for those trips any longer. That's not how accounting works. Like it's okay if you're trying to mitigate and reduce, and if what you can't avoid, you then invest in reductions. But it's not okay to do that financial accounting thing where the balance sheet says zero, but the actual emissions and the consequences we suffer as humans haven't changed, but that's still unfortunately very hard to read in the Scope Three emissions. 

Gaël Duez: 

So I got it with all this tricks. Now there is something that I don't understand is that it is not allowed to do that if you pretend to follow the GHG protocol. But maybe there is something that I should have checked right from the start and asking this question is that do they actually claim to be GHG protocol, compliant or they don't really care? And they publish whatever methodology on their own because they're so big that they don't bother? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah a combination and, different ways of phrasing it. I don't have all the reports right in front of me at the moment, but I noticed a shift in how things are presented. So all of them claim to be carbon neutral or on their trajectory to meet science-based targets, and they do, like mention science-based targets. But then when you look for, what do they account for? They have all those forms for the different standards, and some of those are GHG protocol, but there's also all these other reporting standards, which they get certified through big consultancies pretty much. But what happens with these certifications, what I noticed is that they get certified, their reporting on Scope One and Two, but not on Three. And that's like, I think where the language has changed. So there is some vagueness in how the reporting, the copy of the reporting is phased these days where it's the, oh, but we do our accounting, we go through this process, we get certified, but only for operational emissions and operational only includes Scope One and Two. It usually does not refer to Scope Three, so those checks differ. And some like Apple, they get it certified for all categories, including the 15 and Scope Three. But most of the others, from what I can gather, only do it for those where they actually track. And it doesn't mean that they track against all Scope Three categories.

Gaël Duez: 

Okay, so, got it. 

Cathleen Berger: 

Super nerdy. 

Gaël Duez: 

Super nerdy. Still regarding the methodology I was discussing about a forthcoming interview with, Oliver Cronk from the excellent show Architect Tomorrow. He was my partner in crime in London, helping me a lot with all the interviews of the speakers and so on. And when I mentioned our forthcoming interview he was really, really excited. He dropped many, many, potential interesting questions. One of them I really wanted to ask you, but now I guess both of us, we're gonna feel very stupid. I mean, Oliver and I, because actually regarding what you've said, I think they are far, far away from considering it. But I have to ask it, do they at least consider slightly enabled emissions and by enabled emissions, I'm referring to the wording that, for instance, Will and Holly Alpine as, popularized for Microsoft, where this is the emissions that your product enables, especially if you work for the oil and gas industry, for instance. This is the Microsoft case and the Microsoft campaign that Holly and Will has started. Because even if you reduce your operations, even if you include actually Scope Three, if we don't include in the Scope Three part, what our products have enabled to produce as extra emissions, we can be misleading the point. And I guess the word enabled emission is not strictly defined in their standards such as the GHG protocol, but do you get the point?

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah, yeah, I do. Thanks for clarifying. Okay. I wish I could say something else, but, no, like, especially when you mentioned the Microsoft example is super interesting 'cause we know that some of their technology is used for drilling. But the only part where this is mentioned that their technology and they need to weigh difficult decisions, is used or maybe used in this way is in the policy section. So like, which alliances do you join, which associations and, other like alliances in a forum, do you subscribe to, are you a member of et cetera. That's where it's mentioned, but I haven't seen it in the emissions accounting. 

Gaël Duez: 

Okay, so unfortunately I was expecting this answer regarding everything that you say already, in this episode, but I had to ask it. And there is another one regarding the methodology that you briefly mentioned, but maybe it would be interesting to explain why it's an issue and is it something that is still prominently put forward in all those reports? This is the per uni disclosure, so I am make x kilos of, greenhouse gases. Per dollar, per user, per whatever. Is it something that is still used and could you maybe explain why it's an issue? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah, it is still used. Yeah, for sure. The revenue thing, like sometimes it is per, like, mostly, it's actually quite high sums. I haven't seen anything per dollar. Usually it's per a hundred thousand in revenue or even a million in revenue. It depends on the company the emissions intensity. But it's also used for things like say, catering and offices that you use financial data to say, we spend this much and this is our emissions intensity. The incentives for that, from an accounting perspective don't really make sense because if you, for example, procure, local, biological, seasonal food that may be more expensive, then the fast food chains that's packaged in plastic that you may order for your offices. But if you go by spend, then that means it looks like you have lower emissions, even though, we know it's higher. So there are some discrepancies in there. And then the other thing that when with the output, when you see that like overall emissions per revenue, like 1 million revenue have gone down, but if their profit margins have grown exponentially, which they seem to claim with artificial intelligence is what they're on the way for. That doesn't say much about the absolute emissions. You know, from a science-based targets perspective, we still have the goal to reduce our absolute emissions, and it doesn't matter how much money we make, if the absolute emissions grow, they grow and it is sort of irrelevant whether, you know, you've been able to earn more money because you sell your product for more money. If the emissions like nothing about it changed. It's just a nice way for marketing to say, oh, but we've reduced it. And like, our shareholders are quite happy because now when we make the same amount of money, our emissions are lower, but lower compared to what? This definitely continues to be a question. 

Gaël Duez: 

And I think this is marketing, but it's also finance. We play with numbers and with something that is pretty artificial, which is the financial sector. It has ties. I sometimes, I wonder if it has still, strong enough ties with the real world, but we, we get so used to compare, you know, per unit of this per miles traveled, et cetera, that we forget that actually we're dealing with hard physical limits that care only about absolute numbers. Now connecting to absolute numbers in materiality, let's briefly get your opinion on the potential that the CSRD, so the, new reporting laws, in Europe already had or could have had in in the future, they've been pretty watered down recently, but all of these tech companies are so big that they will have to report if they still want to operate in, in the European Union. Will it help you, basically, because everything you described before as the discrepancy of data, the discrepancy, either in methodology, sometimes the fact that it's a footnote where the most important information are, will it change if or when they will comply to CSRD reporting? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah, that's definitely the hope. The latest, I haven't read the details of the latest version. I was part of the process and like looked into the, the mechanisms when they were consulting on it and I was quite hopeful because indeed it requires like, or it used to require, and I don't know if it's still in, machine readable data and like just reporting against all categories to make it more comparable. That would help significantly. I will say in the current climate and with the, like the deadlines that are in some of those reporting initiatives, when will the reporting start? And I think it's financially year '26 or '27, so it's not even gonna be the next reports, but maybe the ones after it's, it's also a lot of time before we actually get that data. And I worry, and that's just other content I work on. I work particularly on the Digital Services Act and like what happens in terms of platform governance, there is a risk that some companies will read this law as narrowly as possible, and if they do so, it might be that they only publish the data as it refers to the European Union. That's not what's intended. But I am not a hundred percent confident that they will report as intended or whether there will be separate reports that just comply with CSRD in the European Union instead of it being an international standard. I think that's the worry I have at the moment. 

Gaël Duez: 

Yeah. But okay, I didn't see that coming. But still, I mean, with more than 400 million, inhabitants in, in customers, I guess these numbers will still be interesting, to compare. Hopefully, hopefully we'll see. Thanks a lot for all these explanation on the methodology side of things, because it helps us understand that it's not that much comparable and there are many, many, misses in this report still. Teacher Cathleen, can we now see who are the good or bad or terrible the student in the room? Because you described quite precisely what the main companies are doing. So, and you mentioned already that some of them didn't disclose the 2024, numbers. But for the companies who already did, what can you tell us and maybe starting, you already mentioned them, but, Alibaba. 

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah, happy to. So as I, I mentioned with Alibaba, their reporting is more detailed than it used to be. So because you also wanna provide more hope, I can gather a bit more than I used to be able to. So that's nice. More transparency. I think transparency is key, but I will say that, contrary to what they claim in their report, they're not reducing their emissions because they sold, two entities and they pretty much just scratched the reporting on them in their emissions. So that overall, there is no reductions but actually a, a growth. So that's quite worrisome. But they also report in emissions per revenue for Scope Three. So it is, it is very hard to read the details and how exactly that lines up, particularly for data centers, for example. Like, I just have questions around what's happening there, and that's super difficult to understand in the data. I just don't have enough info to really compare it there. Amazon, as I mentioned, hasn't reported at least when I last checked their 2024 data, but they've made a couple announcements since the last annual ESG reports, which to me just indicate that they're gonna double down on what I call the 'nuclear bandwagon'. So instead of continuing their investment in wind, solar, hydro energy, they're gonna say, oh, let's invest in, whether that's gonna be the approach of Meta and Google to, to have small modular nuclear reactors that they wanna invest in, or whether they are gonna jump on the Microsoft bandwagon and say, we open up plants that were closed before just because we call this and then it's no longer green or renewable energy, but clean energy and we're forgetting about waste or any other potentials. Or the fact that particularly the small modular reactor technology isn't actually gonna be viable before 2030 at the earliest, and that's at the earliest. We all know how innovation goes, might as well take longer. So that's, that's all future bets and you see a lot of that in, in the press releases of the company.

Gaël Duez: 

Quick question on this. Claims, they're claims? Or they are actually also incorporated in the data, in the reporting to reduce the emissions or the forecast emissions, because I can understand a bit of greenwashing like, hey, we invested here and here and there and we will be heroes in 2030, but as long as we don't touch the data… And do you mean that they actually incorporate into the reduction targets these investments? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah. So that's, that's very vague in how it's done. The, then it's not in the data 'cause we don't have the data yet. But when you look in, how are you going to meet your own climate goals? Pretty much all of the reports talk about how investments in artificial intelligence make it challenging. And then it's sort of open, whether it's challenging and meetable or challenging to-impossible to adhere to those targets and more investments are needed. And then they start talking about the investments they're making as 'bets' to potentially meet their targets. And in those bets to potentially meet their targets, there's a lot of conversation and investments in nuclear energy.

Gaël Duez: 

Okay, so Amazon check. Alibaba check. There is the two big kids on the playground that are Microsoft and Google. And when I check your data, Microsoft seems to be under quite a lot of pressure at the moment, but fun fact is, once again, according to the overall big numbers that are shared, they, they've reduced their data, their emissions, actually, I think it's an interesting Freudian slip that I said they reduce the data instead of their emissions. Maybe it's that, I don't believe that much, that the data equals the emissions. Sorry. 

Cathleen Berger: 

We'll just leave that there. 

Gaël Duez: 

Okay. I I, I won't edit that part because that's a funny one. But Microsoft was reporting 17 point 16 millions tons of CO2 equivalents in 2023. And in 2024, they actually reduced by almost a million and a half, if not 2 million. So 15 point 54. So as you say, not necessarily comparable to all the others. Not, not strictly following all the rules, and definitely lacking some accountability. But I mean, they've been under quite a lot of pressure and still they're reducing. Now that is for sure that they've massively increased between 2022, 2023. So what, what, what should we think about it? What are the caveat here? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah. Microsoft is super interesting because they are, I would say, the most ambitious company in terms of reduction claims, right? So Microsoft announced a few years ago that they were gonna be carbon negative and also take care of all their historical greenhouse gas emissions. Because they wanted to invest in carbon capture technologies and like so massively invest in getting more emissions out of the sky than they've emitted in their lifetime as a company. So super, super ambitious just to put that there. And they actually at the time with the then chief sustainability officer who I believe is no longer there. They set science-based targets for how much they need to reduce to make that happen, and they are failing their own like forecast targets in order to meet those commitments. So, that they also say that they have failed their own targets and need to readjust because they actually grew their emissions by 23% compared to 2020, which was their baseline year for those commitments. So that's quite significant overgrowth. And that's where also the data I find is super interesting, 'cause if you go year over year, it's like, oh yeah, one and a half, 2 million less. But what wasn't accounted for? And that, that year, for example, didn't have any of the AI investments in it yet. We don't know how, for example, they account for their investments in OpenAI. I actually can't read that in the “report”. I only see Microsoft itself, but none of their investments in, you talked about enabled emissions, other technologies. I can't find that in the report. It's just not there. So there are questions in what does that mean? And we also know Microsoft is, technology is used for drilling. I also can't find that. So, yay. It's one and a half million less in the absolute emissions they reported. But it's far off their own reduction targets that were vetted in terms of science-based emissions. And I have questions around their investments and how those are accounted for. 

Gaël Duez: 

I fully get it. So the trends and are not good. Their own objectives are not met. And yet, and don't get me wrong, I think it's terrible what they're doing and the way they're reporting it, but sometimes I've got the feeling that they're, being punished for trying to be the most ambitious. You know, like, oh, we really wanted to achieve something. And actually they fail. Like pretty much all the others, maybe except one. We will discuss it a bit later, you know, because they expose themselves, oh, we want to be carbon negative, which has no sense at a company level. It needs to be a closed system. So, scientifically speaking, this has no basis, but I think they attracted a lot of heat on their sustainable commitments because actually the claims that they will achieve quite a lot compared maybe to a Meta or a Google, which are of significant size actually, when it comes to their, their carbon emissions.

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah. No, and maybe just adding to that, that is, that is true, but it's the, why did they come out with these claims? They came out in exactly that period that I mentioned before, like 2021, when there was this hype of 'you wanna attract talent, you gotta own your corporate responsibility, and you gotta do better'. That's when those commitments were made because they allowed them to hire the best of the best to get talent. It was a business adv-, business advantage at the time. To be more sustainable. But what has happened since and how has the culture changed? And I think that's something that Microsoft needs to get some heat for because from what I'm hearing from the people who are either still working there or have recently left that high of like, we are doing it. We wanna be responsible, we are trying what we can to make it happen. It's okay to fail if you can't meet everything, but if you just let, let it peter out and hope nobody asks about it anymore. That's probably not really responsible. So I think, you know, public scrutiny is important and we need to keep that high.

Gaël Duez: 

Agree. Yeah. Many employees could feel like they were cheated, attracted by false promises. And let's talk about Google because they're very consistent kid here. Increasing regularly their emissions, year-on-year... sorry! What, what can you say about Google? 

Cathleen Berger: 

I think they're the, the least, like super flashy and 'we've made all of those commitments'. They just do the, the reports. So far, were sort of always the same. And it read like copy paste year after year. Not much changed. For the last one, a bunch has changed and I am a bit worried about the next one coming because the 2024 report actually has two versions. There's one version that works in the US where you can ask anything about the report, including the data using artificial intelligence, and then there's a report that you can access in the European Union where none of those features work because you know. Artificial intelligence and European laws, it's, it's like super ridiculous. But everything about it is the fact that they actually say and spell it out. And it was something that I think in 2023 I started, or '20, like with the data of 2023, I started saying like, folks beware, tech is gonna invest in nuclear energy. That is gonna happen because they're already saying that they can't build enough solar and wind parks to meet their demands. Now it's all about nuclear, and Google is super pronounced about that, that there is no mention of renewable energy. It's all clean energy, and that is sort of the, the buzzword term for, for nuclear at this day and age, but that's what they wanna invest in. And the timeline has shifted significantly because of that investment. So instead of being, I think it used to be 2030, their target when they had reduced all of ther emissions to 70% less than their base year. And that has changed because. They're pretty much saying that they're investing in those small nuclear modular reactors. And if they come to fruition, a first one will be available in 2030. Others will follow in the years to come, but until 2030, they're also saying that the electricity that's available right now cannot meet their demand for the artificial intelligence investments, that they've made. So I see that not just petering along. I'm quite worried that the next report is gonna put Google's emissions data up quite significantly. 

Gaël Duez: 

Okay. And would it be a fair statement to say that it's pretty much the same story for Meta? 

Cathleen Berger: 

Well Meta is more laissez-faire and doesn't even try to say they're super committed. Right? So Meta, yeah, I would say they, they don't even spend as much time on the marketing as Google. Like there's actually maybe one thing to point out in Meta that I think was one of the reason why I was like, yeah, I'm not even reading this report right now. I actually put it aside for a couple days because the rhetoric used there, and in the beginning I said that, the geopolitical climate right now is very counterproductive to this sort of work and this sort of transparency. But there is a complaint in this report that perceptions about what's going on and like interpretations of our actions. So sort of this whole spiel on people are just portraying us badly. We're just doing what we're allowed to do. Stop. You know, stop the scrutiny, stop holding us to account like this. The way it's, it's like fully leaning into, the, this is all free speech and all of this is not required any longer, so it's a very, yeah, the, the tone has changed, let's put it that way. 

Gaël Duez: 

There is pushback?

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah.

Gaël Duez: 

Including in the very own ESG report?

Cathleen Berger: 

Yes.

Gaël Duez: 

Inside the dungeon.

Cathleen Berger: 

Yes.

Gaël Duez: 

Okay.

Cathleen Berger: 
It's worrisome.

Gaël Duez: 

Now, now let's focus maybe on a different story. Fun fact Meta, Google, Microsoft. They're all around 15 million tons of CO2 equivalents in 2024, 2023. It's around, it's quite funny actually, that they're quite similar in their emissions. We see that worrying trend. Now, the, the, it seems that we have at least one good student, which is Apple, because Apple has decreased according to your analysis, quite significantly by 25% between 2022 and the 2024 reports. So are we allowed to say that at least we're happy with the current trend with Apple? And is there any hidden issues, I would say?

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah. In terms of reporting, they're definitely a role model. It's very easy to find the data and they report against everything. And whenever there's changes in the methodology, it's actually in the text and not hidden in footnotes. So in terms of reporting, like as, as a geek who goes through the data, it's actually really nice to understand. And they even go into all the chemicals because what's different with them is that their impact is largely based on a physical product, right? It's less the data service, it's not the platform, it's, it's physical product, and they've really invested in reduction and they're good on a good trajectory. They're also saying they're under pressure because they're stuck in a system that doesn't, provide certain services that they also depend on in a carbon neutral way, which is understandable, right? They're also part of the infrastructure where their offices are hosted. But what I find particularly intriguing is I, I would really say from a reporting perspective, I, I don't have much to criticize. I just read in there that the pressure or the, the reason that they can reduce is because they are so big in the, in the product market that they have enough old products to recycle. And now all the new fleets of iPhones, of AirPods of whatever comes out can be 100% recycled with materials of old Apple products. To be able to achieve that, to have so many products available that you can develop entire new product lines. On the basis of these recycled materials means you have like absolute market dominance, right? It's quite fascinating for new incumbents who wanna challenge that or wanna bring out phones that only use recycled materials, it's a very different, it's not a fair level game, right? They're not going to have that status and that opportunity that Apple has to actually make it happen. So that's the the caveat I would put there, which I don't know where to, put it as a consumer, because I'm fascinated from an environmental perspective, but in terms of a market perspective, I don't know if that's what we want as consumers. And let me add one, one thought on that, which is something I was quite intrigued about and wanted to dig into before I got distracted with my day job that for the first time in this latest report, they actually also say that they're gonna open source, the, the model and the, the code for the robot they built to do recycling. So in the past I've always criticized like, cool that you recycle, love it that you've invested and that you innovated to make that happen. But what with the small ones and the incumbents and it's all proprietary information, so you're just getting richer with that technology you've developed. And now it seems that they're actually planning on open sourcing, that if that happens, I would say they can keep their role as a, as a model student for a while longer. I was quite intrigued to read that. 

Gaël Duez: 

Yeah, it's very interesting because on the strictly greenhouse gas emissions side, they seem to be on a good trajectory. We don't know yet if they will meet their goals and any way that's very, very bad news that they will be the only one meeting their goals because all the others are going in the wrong direction. But because in in the sustainability field, we tend to always have a, but like, oh, they're doing this, that's great, 'but'. Because you, we know it's all systemic and it's so much entrenched in the way our economy operates, that even the most well attentioned company, there is still a lot of things to do and to achieve, and therefore from being perfect and to be fully compatible with a circular economy and, you know, reducing waste to something negligible, et cetera, et cetera. So just let's admit that, at least on the carbon emission side, they're doing okay. Even if they could do better. Now the but usually comes exactly from what you were describing, but with a slightly different angle is that that generates so much e-waste and there's so much in this sort of e-waste business that we always push for new devices and we prevent people to repair their own devices and of this, we feed the hype marketing, the formal marketing, I would say, and encourage people to change their smartphones for new ones, despite the older ones being perfectly functionable. It's a bit weird regarding the, the statement that you made with the, we want to recycle. And I usually, I've heard that it's almost impossible to truly recycle, down-cycle, some piece of materials here. So I'm really surprised it, it, it brings a lot of question, to be honest, whether, they can truly achieve circular economy for their own products because of the market dominance that you've just mentioned. I'm, I'm really puzzled by the statement they made, and I don't know if you've got any, any insights on them, and that's perfectly fine if you don't.

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah, I don't, I wish I knew. I think in my, in my last, like last year, I said something like, I wish I knew how many devices they got to create a hundred thousand new ones. Like I wish I knew the ratio of like how many old phones are traded in in order to make the new fleet happen. It'd be very, very interesting because exactly of that question, like is it circular or is it down scaling? Or is it really just a fraction of it? Like I'm, I'm not entirely sure, but I'd be super interested to learn more. And as I said, like I was intrigued to see that in their push to reduce because they also, like, there's a lot about chemicals where I'm like, yeah, I'm not a chemist. I have no idea. Like that part I just glimpse over and I'm like, ah, I don't know. I don't get it. But I wonder whether in that innovation, if they open source some of their formulas or even the code for robots, whether there is a way for us to actually invest in a circular economy in a way we haven't done before. Because this knowledge, this information of how they do it. Used to be proprietary and I just, I'm intrigued to understand whether that can help other companies do the same thing.

Gaël Duez: 

I wonder as well, not sure chief Sustainability officer of Apple will ever join this podcast, but,she  wants… she will be more than welcome 'cause I'm, I'm really curious about how they plan to achieve this. But let's be honest, on a carbon emission scenario, they're doing okay. Not crazy success, but better than, significantly better than all the others. Now I've got one last question, and you actually slightly mentioned it with Microsoft and OpenAI. I was wondering about the subsidiaries, and that's an interesting question for me because GitHub, for instance, was acquired by Microsoft and I don't know how these claims are solid or not because you as the expert are not, but they, they made some pretty big moves in the sustainable area. They wanted to help developers have access to a greener code, green coding solutions. Yeah. They seemed, and I, at least the head of sustainability, is really active in the field to do the right things. And once again, I don't do or don't endorse them because, I don't know, it's just that a feeling and something, a perception that quite a lot of people in the, in the software industry can, can notice. And I was wondering. Do you manage to get access to specific data for GitHub, for instance, or for Slack, or is it all merged into one big sustainability report? 

Cathleen Berger: 

The latter, I'm afraid. 

Gaël Duez: 

Okay.

Cathleen Berger: 

That's, yeah, it's not entirely clear. There might be some hidden info on that in those 200 pages copy before the actual data, but in the data I don't see product specific information, with the exception of Apple, where each device has its own product, footprint, but I don't see it in the others for the subsidiaries. I also don't see it in Google for YouTube, for example, which I assume has a massive, massive, massive impact because of the amount of video uploaded every day. But I don't see that distinction in the, in the data itself. 

Gaël Duez: 

Okay. I was sort of expecting this answer. But, I was hoping, 'cause you know, when they acquire quite innovative and, and good willing company...

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah.

Gaël Duez: 

I would've hoped that that would've contaminated the big corporation the right way rather than the other way. But anyway.

Cathleen Berger: 

Yeah. Yeah. There might be a report for the company itself like, that, I don't know. Sometimes you see subsidiaries actually putting out their own ESG reports and that may just skip my radar because I do that in my free time. So I haven't looked into all the subsidiaries separately, but I wouldn't be surprised if some of them who have that have more ambition than their the mother company may actually put out their own reports. 

Gaël Duez: 

Yeah, I should double check. Now, Cathleen, just before asking you the closing question, just one side note, you don't cover Salesforce at all and just wonder why, because once again, it's a perception. It's not fact. So it's highly debatable, but it seems to me that Salesforce remains one of the only tech companies today daring to talk about climate change and still putting it at least in their communication. Once again, I'm not, I'm not endorsing anyone here, but they, they claim that they still care about climate change. They support some initiatives, especially in AI and… but they also under a lot of pressure because as far as I understood, several years ago, they decided to follow their own protocol rather than the GHG protocol. So why not covering Salesforce? Is it just a question of I don't have time, Gaël, sorry, I've got a job, or is there other reasons?

Cathleen Berger: 

I should look into it again. But, admittedly, when I first started these reports, I was looking for comparisons to Mozilla. That's where it started and then the other reason was indeed that they didn't follow GHG protocol when I looked into the report, and that was for me a question of how much of the methodology to be able to assess it, because I didn't wanna just assume this is correct without going into all the details of the accounting. So I admittedly, when I last checked, I just wasn't a hundred percent on the methodology and had skipped it and I haven't looked at it since. So omission on my side. 

Gaël Duez: 

Yeah, no, but that's very interesting. Because it's a very concrete example of when a company doesn't follow a methodology, it prevents a lot of people to actually use it, compare it, and it's not a lack of, okay, a tone is a tone noise. Like someone like you who gets into the details. Who's very knowledgeable in carbon emissions. You, just said, okay, it's too much work. I will focus on the ones actually doing the, the job properly. So I dunno if they changed their mind and, and started reporting following the stricter GHG protocol now. But it's a very good example on why we need methodology and hopefully, rules to be followed by everyone. Cathleen, I promised you that we will do a short episode. We are reaching the one hour, limit. So this is not a short episode, and I know that you've got, a lot of work to do on your regular paid job. So here's a time to ask you my last closing question, which is, would you share a positive piece of news regarding sustainability? 

Cathleen Berger: 

I wonder whether there's anyone who listened to this episode would, would feel like that is appropriate given what we talked about in the recording? I, I will say the reason that I keep doing it and the reason that I'm still engaged on a personal level is because the community is amazing, right? There's a lot of people who genuinely care, who are incredibly knowledgeable and who try to point to the aspects where powerful need to be held to account by those that can set the rules, right? We as individuals may not do that, but pointing in the right direction, doing the nitty gritty work and developing, whether that's code that shows that it can be done differently or the advocacy campaigns that underline it, they, that's what keeps me going because I know there, there will be people who find it useful that somebody else has ducked through the data so they can do their work better. So I will say ultimately it's the community more so than the companies at the moment. 

Gaël Duez: 

Well, that's a beautiful closing word, community of a company. Well, thanks a lot for joining the show. Thanks a lot for this work. I mean, I knew before we registered today that it was a lot of work. Now with the examples that you provided, I'm just astonished by the amount of work that it requires. It's just, it's not just crossing a few spreadsheets because actually these spreadsheets don't exist and you have to create them, and you have to challenge every numbers to make sure that the, the methodology sticks and or explain the differences. So, wow. A massive kudos. I'm, I'm very, very impressed and I'm very honored that you join the show today. I wish that you will have the time to keep on producing those results next year and maybe add one or two extra companies. Is there anywhere that people can help you? 

Cathleen Berger: 

I mean, anyone who, who reads those reports and finds something that I may have missed, I'm always happy to get comments on this. Like, Hey, did you see this line? So I, I know where to direct my attention rather than get lost in the 250 pages. So, anyone who loves those numbers and gets nitty gritty, always happy to hear from them and figure out how to do more and better in the time we have to analyze that. 

Gaël Duez: 

How can they reach out to you?

Cathleen Berger: 

It's either commenting on the blog, which I believe you will be adding to this episode also, or sending me an email via my website. 

Gaël Duez: 

Okay, I will put both links. Cathleen, thanks a lot for joining. It was a great discussion. 

Cathleen Berger: 

Thank you so much and really do keep up the good work. It's important to hear from the community and what they're all doing, so thank you for that.

Gaël Duez: 

You're welcome. Thank you for listening to this Green IO episode. Because accessible and transparent information is in the DNA of Green IO, all the references mentioned in this episode are in the show notes. You can find these notes on your favorite podcast platform, and of course on the website Green IO dot tech, alongside the full transcript. If you enjoyed this interview, please take 30 seconds to give us five stars on Apple Podcast or Spotify or a like on YouTube. Sharing this episode on social media or directly with relatives working in or with a big tech company is also a smart move to provide them with perspective on the scale of their environmental impact, and it will greatly help us get more responsible technologists on board. Thank you for this. In our next episode, we will welcome one of the speakers at Green IO Paris. It might be Ophélie Coélho or Chris Adams, or Anaëlle Beignon or Sophia Falk. I just need a bit of extra time to plan these episodes, so you'll have to follow us to know I'm afraid.

By the way, Green IO is a podcast and much more. So visit Green IO dot tech to subscribe to our free monthly newsletter and check the conferences we organize across the globe. The next one is in Paris on December 9-11, and the lineup is stellar. As Green IO listener, you can get a free ticket to any Green IO conferences using the voucher Green IO VIP.mJust make sure to have one before the 30 free tickets per conference are all gone. I'm looking forward to meeting you there to help you, fellow responsible technologists, build a greener digital world. One byte a time.