AT&T’s 4,200 Efficiency Projects Generate $44m Savings

AT&T found $44 million in annualized energy savings by implementing 4,200 energy efficiency projects at its facilities in 2010, the company announced today.

The telecoms company realized the savings through initiatives such as deploying desktop power management software on 169,000 computers, saving about $614,000 a year.

It also replaced tower light controllers and incandescent bulbs with LEDs at over 1,100 cell sites. And by removing switches at 11 central office sites, AT&T cut power consumption across its network by more than 300,000 kWh, the company said.

In the past year AT&T also launched online energy management training for corporate real estate managers.

The 2010 efforts build on initiatives from previous years, including an energy scorecard rolled out in 2009. This grades energy performance at each of AT&T’s top 500 energy-consuming facilities, based on real estate managers’ energy performance.

AT&T established its energy intensity metric, based on kWh per terabyte of data carried over the network, in 2008. The next year it set a goal to reduce that intensity by 15 percent, and achieved a 23.8 percent intensity decrease, reaching 498 kWh per terabyte.

For 2010, AT&T set a goal to reduce energy intensity by an additional 15 percent.

“The roll out of the energy scorecard and energy training program were key factors which enabled AT&T to achieve these significant energy savings,” said John Schinter, AT&T’s director of energy. “We provided our employees with the needed tracking tools, training and incentives for them to be successful in their tremendous efforts to reduce AT&T’s energy use and realize significant cost savings.”

AT&T is ranked 86^th on Corporate Responsibility Magazine’s 12^th Annual 100 Best Corporate Citizens List, and was also included in the 2010 Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index (DJSI) and in Carbon Disclosure Project’s (CDP) 2010 Carbon Disclosure Leadership Index (CDLI.)

It is a member of the Department of Energy’s Save Energy Now Leader Program, promising in 2009 to increase its industrial energy efficiency 25 percent over the next decade.