Business

Akamai Publishes 2019 Sustainability Report (HITS)

Akamai has released its year-end report on its global sustainability practices. The report summarizes Akamai’s innovative efforts to reduce the amount of energy consumed by its global intelligent edge platform, decrease greenhouse gas emissions, recycle electronic waste responsibly, and have meaningful and beneficial impacts on the places it works, operates, and lives.

Energy efficiencies realized have delivered millions of dollars in expense savings while making Akamai’s customers’ digital experiences fast, intelligent, and secure — in an environmentally friendly way.

Highlights of the 2019 report include:

–Half the company’s electricity is expected to soon come from renewable sources, consistent with its “50 by 20” pledge.
–Over the past two years, the company has invested in net-new, on-grid renewable wind energy projects in Dallas, Texas, and Chicago, Illinois to power its operations in those urban centers.
–Internet traffic delivered over the Akamai Intelligent Edge has continued to grow while the company’s energy consumption and carbon emissions have remained relatively flat: since 2015, Akamai’s platform has used 61% less energy per gigabit of capacity while traffic has grown by over 182%.
–Akamai’s new global headquarters, which opened in Cambridge, Massachusetts in November 2019, prioritized sustainability in the design. The building’s core and shell were built to achieve LEED Gold v4 certification standards as defined by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Sustainability is a major component of corporate social responsibility at Akamai, part of a holistic approach to efficient systems and processes implemented with the goal of benefitting all of Akamai’s stakeholders. Commitments focus on reducing energy intensity across the platform, investing in net-new renewable energy projects around the world, reducing and managing greenhouse gas (GHG) output, and responsibly managing e-waste.

In addition to establishing public goals, Akamai is taking a step further to engage suppliers in sustainable action and encouraging employees, partners, and like-minded companies to take action in the areas where we all work, operate, and live.