Environment

Decisions and initiatives related to our environmental impact and footprint are led and supported at the operating group and/or individual business unit level.

 

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We do not currently have in place, nor do we require, our businesses to measure environmental metrics, including Green House Gas (GHG) emissions. We do require that all our businesses meet all applicable environmental laws, regulations, and standards.

Our reality, as a software company with few owned facilities or data centers, is that our GHG emissions are predominately of an indirect nature.

As a result of COVID-19, we continue to have a large portion of our employee base working from home or at least coming into our offices on a significantly less frequent basis, although this does vary across geographies. We also continue to evaluate our need for physical office facilities and reduce both the number of locations and/or their respective footprint when determined appropriate.

One of our learnings, through the pandemic, was our ability to stay connected and effective with both our co-workers and our customers. While our business travel is increasing from pandemic levels, we continue to share best practices on how to engage without always being in-person.

Moving forward, we will share more examples like the ones below, on the actions and initiatives that our employees are championing, as they do what they do best, make a difference.

Jonas – Making a Difference

Our Jonas UK Portfolio has formalized and brought its existing and new initiatives under one program that they refer to as the Jonas Foundation.  In 2022 the portfolio engaged with a third-party consultant to analyze their emissions data for 2021 which was quantified as 658 MTCO2e and broken down as follows: Scope 1 – 168 MTCO2e, Scope 2 – 70 MTCO2e and Scope 3 – 420 MTCO2e.  The portfolio is now working to retrospectively offset their 2021 emissions as well as working towards their plan of Carbon Net Zero, which they plan to have in place in 2023.

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Emissions Data 2021

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Emissions Data 2021

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Emissions Data 2021

Our Jonas Fitness Portfolio is also seeking ways to reduce their carbon emissions. One of their focus areas is transitioning to cloud computing from traditional on-premise IT infrastructure. In 2022, the portfolio saved 23 MTCO2e with the vast majority of the savings resulting from the cloud providers use of renewable energy.

Within Jonas Hospitality, our SpaSoft team made the decision to support our planet by planting a tree for every year a team member has been with the company - working with OneTree Planted, a non-profit organization dedicated to restoring forests and creating habitats for biodiversity.

Jonas’ efforts to understand and lessen their environmental impact also include the following:

An electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme to support employees who are interested in leasing electric vehicles. Moving all customer invoicing to digital billing, eliminating 20,000 pieces of paper and 40,000 envelopes as well as eliminating all supplier payments via paper check, no longer purchasing Styrofoam or disposable cups for office use, having heating, cooling and lighting systems turn off during non-office occupied times, including weekends and putting in place an IT workstation recycle and renewal program.

Harris Works to Understand Its Carbon Footprint

Our Harris operating group worked with a third-party organization to quantify and measure their scope 1 and scope 2 emissions based on their global facility footprint. The analysis covered just over 70% of Harris’ total facility square footage globally for the years 2019 through 2022.

The majority of the decline in MTCO2e was the result of having fewer employees in offices during the COVID-19 pandemic. In each of the years presented, the third-party organization was required to use estimates for some facilities due to incomplete or a lack of sufficient information.

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Our Harris operating group’s CIT (corporate information technology) service manages four external, third party, data centers in North America, which service most of their internal infrastructure and business applications.

These data centers produced an aggregate amount of approximately 620 MTCO2e (metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent) in 2022 (642 MTCO2e in 2021). Based on information provided by the data center operators, approximately 46% of the energy consumed was procured from renewable sources in 2022.

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Many Harris business units are also moving their solutions to public cloud infrastructure providers versus being hosted on premise at the customer site. These deployments produced an aggregate amount of approximately 192 MTCO2e in 2022 (215 MTCO2e in 2021).

How Software Can Support Climate Goals

Renewable Energy’s Role in Curbing Global Warming

Our Volaris-owned ConWX business unit provides software that forecasts weather patterns and provides decision support to the renewable energy vertical – specifically wind and solar. Jesper Thiesen, the co-founder and General Manager, closely follows data and reports released by IPCC, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, to ensure we continue to support our customers. The volatility and unpredictability of wind and solar energy sources are creating opportunities to invest in and investigate P2X (electricity storage and conversion) technologies to be able to store power for low-production days as well as convert surplus production to other energy sources.

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Electrification of Public Transportation

Most policy experts, including those at the World Bank, see investment in public transport as a viable option for cities to resolve air pollution problems in rapidly growing cities. Technology has a significant role to play, as well as investments in infrastructure that allow transit operators to support vehicle charging. Dominique Mueller, a product manager within our Volaris-Modaxo Group works with our transit operator customers in support of their efforts to meet their emissions targets. Modaxo’s software solutions help transit operators address two key challenges of electric buses: (1) limited range; and (2) the need for charging.

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HCTC 2022

In October our Harris operating group hosted their first in-person customer conference since 2019. The conference, with a focus on providing networking, relationship building and product knowledge sharing also incorporated Harris’ goal of making a difference. The conference featured no paper, no plastic and significantly reduced hotel housekeeping services in support of lessening our environmental impact. In addition, Harris also purchased carbon offset credits to cover the impact of conference related travel for all attendees. In keeping with our prior commitment to give back in our conference location communities, we also made a $15,000 donation to St Rose Dominican Health Foundation, part of the Children’s Miracle Network of Hospitals.

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Several of our operating groups have been working with third parties to assist in the recycling of a portion of their end of lifecycle IT assets (desk top PCs, laptops, servers, and monitors). In 2022, as provided by our third parties, 39,000 lbs of e-waste was diverted from landfills, including 1,300 lbs of toxic metals resulting in 53,000 lbs of GHG emission reductions.