Greening the Valley, one tech giant at a time

By Stefanie Olsen, CNET News.com HALF MOON BAY, Calif.--The carbon footprint of the tech industry is estimated at 2 percent of the world's total emissions, or roughly the equivalent of the aviation industry's, according to data from McKinsey & Co. Technology executives from Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, and Sun Microsystems were here Tuesday talking about how to prevent it from growing to 3 percent by 2020. The tech industry produces about 800 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalents, including the production of devices and their energy usage after they're sold, according to McKinsey partner James Manyika, who spoke here at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference. With a 6 percent annual growth rate, carbon emissions will hit 1.4 gigatons by 2020, or 3 percent of global emissions, Manyika said. So what is the tech industry... [read full story]