Rupert Murdoch Is Carbon Neutral

News Corporation Achieves Its Carbon Neutral Goal and Looks To Become More Efficient

Rupert Murdoch

According to Rupert Murdoch, his News Corporation has achieved the goal, set nearly four years ago, of becoming carbon neutral by the end of 2010. News Corporation owns the Fox News Channel, 20th Century Fox, Harper Collins, Wall Street Journal, MySpace and the National Rugby League. The company also introduced other short-term and long-term goals to guide its environmental efforts moving forward.

New Corporation made the commitment in 2007 to embed the values of energy efficiency and environmental sustainability into all of their businesses. Making News Corp.'s operations more efficient will save the company millions of dollars. Consolidating its data centers will save News Corp. $20 million a year and reduce related emissions by 15 percent once fully implemented.

The Center hereby requests that News Corporation donate some of its carbon offset credits to our Carbon Mercantile Exchange (CMX).

The investments in energy efficiency yield an average of $180 per ton of carbon avoided, according to Liba Rubenstein, the company's global energy initiative director. News Corporation's absolute emissions in fiscal year 2010 were 2 percent lower than 2006 levels, and 9 percent lower than peak emissions in 2008. The company offset 110 percent of its FY 2010 carbon footprint by investing in emissions reduction projects that include capturing landfill gas and destroying potent refrigerants. Rubenstein's team will now work toward a series of measurable 2015 goals, including:

• Reducing absolute greenhouse gas by 15 percent, compared to 2006 levels
• Reducing greenhouse gas intensity by at least 15 percent
• Investing in clean energy equal to 20 percent of electricity used
• Engaging its 100 largest suppliers on improving their environmental impacts
• Measuring its waste footprint and developing a strategy to reduce it

News Corp. also created a set of intentionally broad long-term goals with no time horizon:

• Power all of its operations with clean energy

• Grow its business without growing its greenhouse gas emissions

• Minimize the amount of solid waste sent to landfill from its production operations

• Continue to engage its readers, employees and customers on sustainability

Its News Unlimited arm in Australia, for example, developed an internal brand and program called One Degree that helped reduce its carbon footprint by 18 percent. Fox Home Entertainment joined forces with Walmart to make DVD packaging lighter, which helped to reduce raw material and transportation emissions.

The initiative also launched a series of efficiency projects that, as Murdoch noted, delivered a return on investment of less than two years. Such a fast ROI seemed unbelievable in the case of a massive solar energy system being built at a Dow Jones campus in New Jersey (pictured at left). The project will supply up to half of the site's energy needs when completed and will be the largest system at a single commercial site in the U.S. (Climate Biz, 3/1/2011)