CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 10, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Akamai Technologies,
Inc. (NASDAQ: AKAM), the global leader in content delivery network
(CDN) services, today announced its carbon reduction commitment to
reduce the company's absolute greenhouse gas emissions below 2015
levels by sourcing renewable energy for 50 percent of its network
operations by 2020. Decarbonizing global operations by putting more
renewable energy on the electrical grid is a critical next step in
Akamai's sustainability journey to reduce its environmental
impact.
Akamai has had great success in decoupling its exponential
business growth from energy and carbon impacts through network
productivity and efficiency gains. However, its global operations
will always require energy, highlighting the importance of
procuring renewables to offset carbon-intensive, grid
electricity.
Akamai is implementing a renewable energy procurement strategy
focused on motivating the expansion of renewable energy markets and
could provide a model for other companies with highly-distributed
and less energy-intensive operations. The company has announced a
commitment to long term investment in renewable energy projects,
geographically aligned with network operations and commensurate
with aggregate network energy usage that includes third-party,
colocation data centers. The company plans to enter into long term
agreements with developers to purchase electricity from new
projects at a fixed-price, retiring the bundled renewable energy
certificates. These agreements are structured to help developers
secure financing for projects that might otherwise not have been
built. Following this strategy, it is expected that by 2020
Akamai's global network operations will cover 50 percent of
electricity consumption using renewable energy, and lower carbon
emissions below 2015 levels, despite a potential 45 percent
increase in network traffic. For more details about this
initiative, please visit the Akamai blog.
"I'm proud of, and excited about, Akamai's strong commitment to
addressing this important sustainability challenge," said
Noam Freedman, senior vice president
of networks, Akamai. "Our customers are going clean and green and
we want to help them go faster forward with a low-carbon-powered,
global delivery network."
Devon Leahy, Director of Sustainability and Social
Innovation at Etsy, agreed with this point, "The ability to get
clean-powered, low-carbon content delivery from Akamai is a
powerful way to extend our own sustainability initiatives."
Akamai's sustainability efforts have been recognized by a number
of recent industry reports including The A List: The Carbon
Disclosure Project (CDP) Climate Performance Leadership Index
(CPLI) for 2014, the CDP S&P 500 Climate Change Report 2014 and
the Dow Jones Sustainability Index North America. The company's
highly-distributed CDN is deployed with more than 210,000 servers
in 120 countries and within more than 1,450 global networks. The
company delivers more than two trillion daily Internet
interactions.
About Akamai
As the global leader in Content Delivery
Network (CDN) services, Akamai makes the Internet fast, reliable
and secure for its customers. The company's advanced web
performance, mobile performance, cloud security and media delivery
solutions are revolutionizing how businesses optimize consumer,
enterprise and entertainment experiences for any device, anywhere.
To learn how Akamai solutions and its team of Internet experts are
helping businesses move faster forward, please visit
www.akamai.com or blogs.akamai.com, and follow @Akamai on
Twitter.
Akamai Statement Under the Private Securities Litigation
Reform Act
This release contains information about future expectations, plans
and prospects of Akamai's management that constitute
forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor
provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of
1995. Actual results may differ materially from those indicated by
these forward-looking statements as a result of various important
factors including, but not limited to, failure to enter into
contracts with renewable energy developers, inability to realize
the expected benefits from any agreements the company does execute,
changes in planned energy consumption, changes in the availability
of renewable energy sources, and other factors that are discussed
in Akamai's Annual Report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form
10-Q, and other documents periodically filed with the SEC.
Contacts:
Rob
Morton
Media Relations
617-444-3641
rmorton@akamai.com
Tom Barth
Investor Relations
617-274-7130
tbarth@akamai.com
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SOURCE Akamai Technologies, Inc.