Qualcomm’s 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report: Resource Management - Energy

Originally published in Qualcomm's 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report

As renewable energy becomes more accessible and the global electricity grid becomes more resilient, it is essential that we shift our strategy-driven efforts towards more climate conscious behaviors. Notably, our goal of reducing direct operational emissions is primarily driven by our commitment to increasingly procure renewable energy and move away from carbon-based fuel use globally in our facilities and manufacturing sites.

We procure renewable energy through long-term commitments. At our headquarters in San Diego, California, we continue to procure additional renewable energy as we decommission¹⁸ our natural gas cogeneration plants. We decommissioned the first of three electricity cogeneration plants and entered into a longterm PPA to replace the cogenerated electricity with renewable energy purchases. This year, our solar PPA in Bangalore, India, contributed to our emissions reductions by about 17,500 tCO2 e.  For our new leases in Noida and Bangalore, India, we negotiated long-term supplies of wind and solar energy. On a yearly basis, we continue to procure market instruments and negotiate agreements that reflect our commitment to utilizing renewable energy. For several Bangalore sites, we’ve renewed contracts for wind, solar and hydro energy supplies, including environmental attributes to enable us to claim renewable energy at those sites. In Hyderabad and at our manufacturing locations in Wuxi, China and Munich, Germany, we continue to procure the necessary market instruments to enable us to claim renewable energy that keeps us on track to meet our goals.

We have also implemented 15 energy saving projects across our manufacturing facilities in 2023. The projects include energy efficiency improvement, equipment operation optimization and adoption of new technologies resulting in more than 3,000 MWh of energy savings per year. At our San Diego headquarters, for example, we have just invested more than $2 million in upgrades to our on-site solar infrastructure, and in Wuxi, we added on-site solar capacity resulting in energy savings of more than 400 MWh per year.

¹⁸ Our cogeneration plants remain available for use as backup power if needed.

Learn more about how Qualcomm is driving innovation, societal advancement and sustainability in the 2023 Corporate Responsibility Report