Here in California, we know all too well that summer days can put a strain on our electricity grid. This is especially true on the hottest weekday afternoons, when air conditioners are working their hardest and office buildings are full of employees.

In response, as part of our climate and sustainability efforts at Yahoo!, we are partnering with Pacific Gas & Electric Company (PG&E) to reduce electricity demand on the hottest days of the year (like today).

When a demand response event happens, the Yahoo! facilities team is alerted by PG&E. Then we let Yahoos know that we’ll be letting our buildings run slightly warmer, and turning off lights that are decorative or near windows.

When we got the call for an event during an unseasonably hot day in May, we were able to reduce our electricity consumption on campus by 13.5% . That’s enough to power roughly 750 California homes. A second event came in July, when temperatures outside reached 95 degrees.

What’s the impact of these kinds of programs? They avoid the need to build additional and costly “peaking” power plants that sit idle 90% of the time except during extreme demand spikes. It’s actually cheaper to reduce energy than to build power plants. In turn, they avoid greenhouse gas emissions (and air pollution) during the curtailment period. It can also help avoid potential blackouts.

During the event, we encouraged our employees to watch how our actions affected our power load in real time via our Green Screen, an online energy monitoring dashboard that tracks energy consumption building by building at our Sunnyvale headquarters. You can see an image below of the results, with a drop-off in energy use starting at 2PM.

Yahoos also received free compact fluorescent light bulbs to help them save money (over $37 per bulb!) and energy at home, along with light bulb recycling information and energy savings tips from Flex Your Power, a state-sponsored energy savings campaign.

If you aren’t a Yahoo! you can still do your part to reduce energy use at peak periods at home. Set thermostats at 78 degrees in the summer, to reduce the load on your air conditioner; shutoff unnecessary lighting; and use appliances like coffee makers, laundry machines, and processing equipment either before noon or after 7 pm.

For more info on saving energy at work and at home, check out Flex Your Power.

Chris Page
Director, Climate and Energy Strategy

Winston Churchill said: “We shape our buildings. Thereafter, they shape us”.

On Tuesday, I watched Jerry Yang and his wife Akiko Yamazaki speak in the sunny main atrium of the Yang and Yamazaki Energy and Environment Center at Stanford University. The newly dedicated building will house scholars whose mission is to solve difficult environmental problems. Jerry and Akiko contributed $50 million toward the construction of this state-of-the-art, day lit building that represents the cutting edge of sustainable design. Made with recycled steel and other green materials, the building will use an estimated 56% less energy and 90% less water than comparable non-green buildings.

The building also encourages collaboration, an especially critical feature when you consider the diverse disciplines it will require to tackle problems such as climate change and growing water shortages. People are more likely to write papers or conduct research together if they regularly bump into one other in the hallway. The open floor plans at Yahoo! are based on the same principle of open communication. Jerry and Aikiko’s building brings professors from a staggering range of departments together with students in a building that is green, beautiful and invites interaction and cross-pollination.

Y2E2 reflects green design at the most thoughtful level: low impact in its initial construction and ongoing operations; consideration for the health and productivity of the students and faculty who will spend their time within its walls; and a place that will encourage playful, unconventional, creative thinking that is the hallmark of Silicon Valley at its best. It’s also exactly the sort of living and thinking that that has to happen in order to solve some of the planet’s most pressing challenges.

Standing in the building’s atrium that evening, surrounded by a cross-section of scholars, business people, students, and other greenies, I was reminded why Yahoo! is so committed to the environment and energy efficiency. The guy at the top obviously cares quite a bit about this stuff, too.

Here’s a video of the dedication.

Chris Page
Director of Climate and Energy Strategy

When Yahoo! committed to going carbon neutral in April, we knew it would be a global initiative. It was only appropriate that on my first day as Yahoo!’s director of climate and energy strategy – before moving my belongings from my life in Boulder, Colorado – I found myself on a plane headed for Western Brazil to check out some small hydropower projects. Things haven’t slowed down much since then.

After much due diligence, Yahoo! has decided to offset its 250 thousand metric ton carbon footprint from 2006 through hydropower in rural Brazil and wind turbines in India. We’ve partnered with EcoSecurities and CantorCO2e, who helped us source, vet, and execute these projects.

What does 250 thousand metric tons look like? Think of taking 35,000 cars off the road for a year, or turning off the lights on the Vegas strip for two months.

We wanted to set a strong standard for approaching this emerging marketplace and developed this checklist to guide us:

• Support high-quality carbon offset projects in areas where Yahoo! has a local presence.
• Find uniquely Yahoo! ways to give back to the communities that benefit from our projects.
• Ensure that the projects we support are verifiable.
• Be as transparent as possible about our process.

After two days of bumpy travel by plane, car, smaller plane and truck, we reached the community of Catorce de Abril, a small village in the state of Rondonia, 1,400 miles northwest of Sao Paulo. It’s powered by the Primavera hydropower project, which produces the offsets that Yahoo! has purchased. This is a small run-of-river dam, which means it uses natural flow and elevation drop to generate electricity. Although hydropower is common in Brazil as a whole, much of this region receives its power from state-subsidized diesel plants. Investing in a clean power project here seemed critical and timely.

Electricity is new to Catorce de Abril. Only recently, the village school was powered by a small diesel generator – dirty, noisy, threatening to young lungs, and not very reliable. And not surprisingly, the school has no computers – classroom materials are copied on a 1970’s-era mimeograph and the nearest Internet connection is an hour away. Yahoo! has committed to connecting the school to the Web and supplying computers and digital cameras that both students and residents can use to reach beyond their village, provide a window into their community via Flickr, and foster an open exchange of ideas.

Almost 10,000 miles away, Yahoo! is partnering with local businesses to purchase offsets from 43 750-kilowatt wind turbines in Vankuswade, Maharashtra, in western India and Tenkasi in Tamil Nadu, in southern India. This investment was particularly important to us, as India is one of the most carbon-producing regions in the world. With our rapidly growing presence in India, we felt a sense of responsibility to encourage the development and use of cleaner energy there. And we‘re exploring various community programs that will support and empower residents of these communities.

We know the issue of global warming is top of mind for our consumers and employees. The top questions in our internal company “question of the week” queue have been about all things green. Yahoo! is committed to being an environmentally responsible business and hopes our approach encourages our industry peers, users and employees to engage, take action, and make their own positive impacts.

Chris Page
Director of Climate and Energy Strategy