Visium Goes Net-Carbon Neutral
Staying true to our company values and ensuring our commitment to the community, in 2020, we decided to make Visium fully net-carbon neutral and carbon transparent. This action is the first milestone of our broader sustainability strategy.
Together with myclimate, a Swiss non-profit of leading experts on climate neutrality, we conducted a comprehensive audit of our emissions from business operations and travel to calculate our 2019 greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (WRI and WBCSD, 2004). This assessment takes into account all direct greenhouse gas emissions (Scope 1), all indirect emissions resulting from the consumption of electricity, district heating and cooling (Scope 2) and all other relevant indirect emissions (Scope 3).
In the year 2019, Visium’s operations caused a total of 52.5 tonnes of CO2e. This compares to average emissions of 88.3 tonnes of CO2e for the average Swiss company of the same size. The largest part of our emissions were contributed by the purchase of new electronic equipment and to cloud computing.
To offset these past emissions, we selected the Gold-Standard certified myclimate international offset portfolio to reflect our values and maximize our impact on further sustainable development goals (SDGs). Visium therefore operates net carbon-neutral since 2019.
As we celebrate this important milestone, we also recognize that this is just the first step of a much longer journey to reduce our carbon footprint as much as we can, while discovering innovative and impactful ways to contribute positively to the environment.
Our next steps are to complete the carbon audit for 2020 and to systematically track and reduce the areas where our emission footprint is largest with targeted initiatives, such as automatically turning off idle compute instances during the nighttime, preferring local and plant based food supplies, and continuing to travel predominantly on public transport or via walking/cycling, etc.
Further links:
The official certification of Visium can be found here.
More information about the calculation guidelines can be found here.
Methodology:
The carbon footprint is based on the internationally recognized standard 'The GHG Protocol: A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard' and includes the climate-relevant greenhouse gases, which fall under the operational control of the company. The data basis for the calculations are from ecoinvent 2.2 and the assessment method IPCC 2007 (GWP 100a).
