Environment

Redefining how we live

We are redefining what environmental sustainability looks like by offering solutions with win-win-win benefits: for our business, for the environment, and for how people work.

Our environmental strategy and approach

We used the pause provided by the pandemic to look at sustainability comprehensively across our global operations and portfolio. With 100 million users in more than 100 countries, Citrix sees sustainability at scale as one of our greatest opportunities to be an agent of environmental change in our industry. During 2020, we reduced our environmental impact even as we demonstrated significant growth in our business.

100 million users in more than 100 countries

Our strategy and management approach to environmental impact are grounded in strong policies. These align with our enterprise-wide commitment to operate in a sustainable manner that minimizes GHG emissions and preserves natural resources.

Our Environmental & Climate Policy was developed in 2020 and describes how we operate our business to reduce our environmental impact, how our products enhance our customers’ sustainability initiatives, and how our solutions make it possible for employees to get work done from anywhere on any device—while reducing energy consumption and carbon emissions.

Helping customers on their sustainability journey

We facilitate our customers’ transition to long-term, flexible work models while simultaneously helping to accelerate their sustainability goals. These are not mutually exclusive priorities and in fact, can work together to reduce carbon emissions at scale.

Citrix Workspace helps customers reduce their energy demand and mitigate environmental impact by driving down corporate office space needs, enabling a shift from energy-intensive desktops and high-performance processors to more energy-efficient devices, and making it unnecessary for applications and data to reside on endpoint devices. For instance, by using the scalable Google Cloud Platform and Citrix cloud services, Neste now needs far fewer servers that are used on a demand basis. This allows the organization to operate in a more energy-efficient way.

Citrix Cloud and Google tools enable better, more agile ways of working and are the right solutions to support Neste's success as a global leader in renewables.

Mari Wasström
IT Service Management Lead
Neste

Read customer success story

IT departments are increasingly incorporating sustainability objectives into their business. According to our recent Pulse survey1 of IT decision-makers, hybrid work has had a significant impact on GHG targets, and these benefits are likely to extend beyond COVID-19:

Citrix/Pulse Survey

76
%

of respondents said their organization had sustainability targets in the past 12 months

93
%

at organizations that have these sustainability targets in place agreed that remote work has helped them with their GHG goals over the past year

84
%

said their company will offer a mix of in-office and remote work in the future, with 67.5% planning to reduce or eliminate their physical real estate

Our solutions enhance IT asset sustainability value by:

Deploying low energy devices

Our products support restriction-free employee device selection so customers can select devices with a low energy consumption to reduce business carbon footprints. Citrix Workspace provides high performance for endpoint devices and reduces user computing device emissions by 90 percent annually.

Extending device lifecycles

Citrix Workspace helps reduce annual embodied GHG emissions and lengthen the useful life and environmental impact of IT devices by three to seven years.

Enabling carbon zero cloud computing

Citrix technologies facilitate the shift from less efficient on-premise data centers to carbon zero cloud hosting. Our cloud services simplify delivery and management of Citrix technologies and reduce costs and business carbon footprint.

Reducing commuting emissions

We create secure and flexible work options that increase hybrid work and decrease commuting emissions. Citrix workspace, networking and analytics transform how employees work to allow them to work securely from any location.

Office equipment energy consumption can use up to twice the amount of home office equipment. Traffic jams in the U.S. account for 26 million additional tons of GHG emissions.2

Global Workplace Analytics

CASE STUDY

Enabling IT sustainability savings at an Australian water utility

The impacts of climate change on water pricing and availability are a major driver of change in the water industry. We are working with an Australian water utility to ensure that their IT approach supports the organization’s efforts to take action on climate change and continue to provide safe and reliable water services. We’re advising them on developing a digital roadmap that incorporates transition to the cloud, which will be less harmful to the environment and enable cost savings and reduced risks. Sustainability benefits include increasing the lifecycle of hardware and additional energy-related cost avoidance or savings on moving to Workspace. These sustainability benefits may potentially add up to $150,000 in cost savings per year and account for approximately 26 percent of the estimated contribution of IT business value.Allowing 1,000 employees to work from home two days per week would reduce annual commuting, and thus potentially reduce the utility’s CO2e generated by staff by 40 percent.

* This figure is based on three use cases only with the sustainability figures based on environmental calculations only. Other sustainability benefits are based on client solutions. Human sustainability cost savings have not yet been calculated. The calculations are based on other clients’ achieved estimates and assumptions of industry best practices and kWh usages and may vary per client.

26
%

of the estimated contribution of IT business value accounted for by sustainability benefits

Responding to the climate crisis

In 2020—the second hottest year on record3—we witnessed climate-related events that further illustrated the urgent need for action. For instance, the Atlantic hurricane season had its highest number of tropical cyclones in a single year3, while in 2021, the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia experienced extreme record-breaking heatwaves.4

Many scientists consider the current climate crisis the defining issue of our time. We must reduce our carbon footprint significantly to cap global temperature increase at 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, to curb the negative impacts on our natural resources, extreme weather events, biodiversity, food security, and the habitability of our planet.  To mitigate the intensity of these risks that humanity and the environment face, businesses and governments need to act swiftly and collaboratively.

As a company doing business around the world, Citrix has a responsibility to address our contributions to climate change. We’re adopting climate risk mitigation and resiliency strategies and using our reach to influence our customers, suppliers, and partners to take positive climate action. We believe this is no longer optional and that the time to act is now.

To learn more about our climate mitigation strategy, see our 2020 CDP Climate Change disclosure and the TCFD Index of this report.

NOAA NASA

Emissions and energy

The pandemic had a significant effect on energy and emissions outputs in 2020. As more workers moved to a virtual model, commuter and business travel dramatically decreased, as did energy consumption of office buildings and other facilities, with less demand for heating, cooling, and lighting within unoccupied workspaces.

In 2020, electricity demand was depressed by 20% or more during periods of full lockdown in several countries.5 Global road transport activity was almost 50% below the 2019 average by the end of March 2020, and commercial flight activity was almost 75% below 2019 by mid-April6

5 International Energy Agency   6 International Energy Agency

As a result, this unforeseen crisis further validated what we already knew—that a hybrid work model has the power to reduce energy consumption and prevent carbon emissions. This rang true for not only our customers, but for Citrix’s own operations. 

Pandemic impact on behavior

20% decrease in electricity demand from 2019
50% decrease in average global road transport activity from 2019
75% decrease in commercial flight activity by mid-April

20% decrease in electricity demand from 2019

50% decrease in average global road transport activity from 2019

75% decrease in commercial flight activity by mid-April

Doing more with less (carbon)

In 2020, in strong support of the world’s urgent transition to a low-carbon economy, we set targets to reduce our total absolute GHG emissions by 30 percent and our carbon intensity per unit of revenue by 50 percent by 2030, from a 2019 baseline level. These targets cover Scope 1 (direct), Scope 2 (energy indirect), and Scope 3 (other indirect) GHG emissions. We expect to refine these targets over the next few years to receive approval from the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) to ensure our targets are consistent with doing our part to keep global warming well below 2°C. In July 2021, we signed the SBTi Science Based Targets Call to Action Standard Commitment Letter to begin this process.

New 2030 carbon reduction targets6

50
%

decrease in carbon intensity per unit of revenue

30
%

reduction in absolute GHG emissions

2019 and 2020 emissions by Scope (MT CO2e)7

Scope 1 (Direct)  
2020 Fleet/heating: 3,336
2019 Fleet/heating: 3,494
Scope 2 (Energy indirect)  
2020 Purchased electricity: 18,0828
2019 Purchased electricity: 19,260
Scope 39 (Other indirect)  
2020 Purchased goods and services: 121,468
Capital goods: 6,513
Fuel and energy-related activities: 5,498
Business travel: 7,801
Employee commuting: 2,71010
Downstream transportation: 110
Product use (sold hardware): 115,943
2019 Employee commuting: 8,433
Business travel: 15,666

From a baseline level in 2019.
2019 Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions have been re-baselined to include all facilities and office space.
8 Does not include data centers.
9 2020 data includes additional Scope 3 categories compared to 2019 data.
10 Includes work from home emissions of employees (not included in 2019 commuting data).

Improving measurement of emissions data

In 2020, we focused on improving how we measure, track and reduce the carbon emissions from our:

Direct operations (Scope 1)

Fleet and heating

Indirect operations (Scope 2 & 3)

Upstream (purchased goods and services, including electricity) and downstream (sold goods and services)

You can’t manage what you don’t measure

We advanced our data collection methods and measured five additional Scope 3 emissions categories compared to 2019. In the process, we learned that Scope 3 makes up the majority of our carbon emissions. Now we have the opportunity to laser-focus our carbon reduction efforts in the areas that will have the most impact. For instance, we are looking for opportunities within our supply chain and the use of downstream devices that support our products.

Scope 3 emissions are inherently more challenging to track and reduce because we have less control over them compared to our direct operations, but in order to meet our new ambitious targets, we are up for the challenge. In the future, we will attempt to quantify our customers’ carbon emissions that Citrix solutions help to avoid, by first enhancing our own measurement and reporting sophistication in this area.

Measured Scope 3 emissions (MT CO2e)

Reducing our energy consumption

We’re always looking for ways to use less energy in our direct operations. In 2020, we replaced outdated key infrastructure assets that consumed significant energy with more energy-efficient versions, such as new energy-efficient chillers used for cooling our office spaces.

Moving forward, we will look to include energy-efficient appliances and fixtures and water-saving faucets.

Because energy consumption naturally increases when employees are using our facilities, last year we developed a detailed sustainability plan for when employees return to work in our facilities that encourages lower energy consumption per employee as re-openings roll out

We’re also putting a major emphasis on renewable energy projects. For instance, the installation of a large solar project at our Fort Lauderdale headquarters complex is due to be online in 2022.

Detailed energy and emissions data is available in the Data Index of this report.

Vattenfall Solar Team partnership

In 2021, we launched a partnership with the Vattenfall Solar Team, a nonprofit project from Delft University of Technology. Its goal: to win the 2021 Classic Events Solar Challenge, a 5-day, 5-stages, 2,500-kilometer race straight through the hot desert of Morocco—purely using solar energy. As a sponsor, we anticipate that this effort will help further inspire our employees to drive innovation around renewable energy at Citrix.

Waste and recycling

In 2020, we continued our efforts to reuse, recycle, or divert waste from landfills.

Almost all of our Citrix offices have simple and easy recycling options. We reuse, recycle, and/or divert landfill items such as plastic bags, packing foam, cardboard, wood, metal, electronic waste, fluorescent bulbs, and batteries.

While we generally discourage single-use products, they became a necessity for health and safety during the pandemic. This led to an increase in the amount of waste per person, but our site waste volumes significantly reduced overall due to limited building occupancy.

As part of our workforce returns to the office, we will be reducing the need for single-use products as much as possible by making reusable mugs and cutlery available and sourcing compostable single-use breakroom and café containers, utensils, cups, straws, and plates.

As employees return to work on-site, a major priority is to develop robust sustainability education and awareness programs designed to encourage positive behavioral changes regarding waste and recycling efforts. We also plan to identify remote work programs that will help to improve home-based office sustainability, such as educating employees on proper waste and recycling techniques, ideal temperature settings, and more.

Looking ahead, we will be kicking off a project to optimize our physical waste footprint by reducing the use of hazardous chemicals, improving how employees use our recycling program, and decreasing the consumption of single-use materials in our breakrooms and cafés.

Sustainable design

Sustainability is now a strategic business imperative of our Real Estate and Facilities Management (REFS) team’s approach to facilities design and management. The pandemic gave the team a unique opportunity to reflect on how to approach sustainability on a macro level. As part of this process, we reconsidered the concept of necessity in our real estate portfolio, prompting us to work with business unit leaders to evaluate the true need of physical leased/owned offices.

Moving forward, we plan to include several sustainable elements in our facilities, including the installation of more energy-efficient appliances and fixtures and water-saving faucets.

We’ve already taken steps to improve the sustainability of buildings across our portfolio, with recent improvements such as:

Replacing fluorescent light fixtures with new LED light fixtures

Discontinuing the provision of single-use water bottles across UK sites

Harvesting rainwater

Recycling electrical equipment

Miami data center optimization project

In 2020, our Miami data center launched an optimization project with sustainable design at the forefront, with plans to reduce our physical footprint by 70 percent, from 86 to 23 racks, which hold the servers. At the same time, we are decommissioning or refreshing 396 devices to improve our security posture. The project is still in the planning, site assessment, and engineering design phase, and is expected to go live in 2021.

70
%

physical footprint reduction goal at our Miami data center will reduce the number of racks from 86 to 23

SKA Gold Rating project

In 2020, Citrix achieved SKA Gold Rating certification for an expansion project build out of ground floor offices at our Cambridge Science Park in the UK. SKA rating is an environmental assessment method, benchmark, and standard that helps landlords and tenants assess build-out projects against a set of sustainability good practice criteria.

Sustainable supply chain and procurement

Supply chain transparency and sustainability go hand in hand. We must have visibility into our supply chain to improve our procurement practices and make them more sustainable. Our REFS team partners with Procurement and other core teams across the enterprise to ensure that all of our purchases—both direct and indirect—are ethically sourced for the best available price at the time of purchase.

To effectively manage our supply chain risks, we’re developing new environmental criteria for all goods and services that generate waste or carbon emissions. This new evaluation process is designed to mitigate our environmental impact, with a focus on sourcing products that will withstand their anticipated demand and reduce waste while safely maximizing a product’s useful life.

With nearly every purchase, we can reduce our carbon impact by minimizing demand for unnecessary materials or wholly eliminating unnecessary items.

By sourcing sustainable alternatives to standard everyday purchases such as office supplies, train or emission-free travel, and bulk snacks, we can limit our waste and contribute to the increase in market demand for more sustainable goods and services.

We’re also working to better understand our Scope 3 emissions impacts and how to best collect sustainability data from suppliers. While we do not have direct control over Scope 3 emissions, we can influence suppliers by developing criteria and standards that they will be expected to follow. To that end, we plan to use learnings from our successful Supplier Diversity team’s criteria development process, while ensuring alignment with Procurement and REFS metrics, for reporting financial spend in certain environmental categories.

We are also a CDP Supply Chain member and are engaging with more than 100 key suppliers to collect primary data and climate strategy information.