First Solar, Inc. (Nasdaq: FSLR) announced that the company participated in and received a score on its inaugural response to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), an organization that gathers and reports greenhouse gas emissions for corporations around the world. First Solar is the first company solely focused on solar development to have its response scored by CDP and included in CDP's 500 and Global 500 report.
First Solar's Disclosure Score was in the top quartile of the 339 S&P 500 respondents. For 2010, First Solar's global operations generated greenhouse gas emissions totaling approximately 194 metric tons of carbon dioxide emission equivalents (CO2e) per megawatt of modules produced, illustrating a reduction in carbon intensity of approximately 21 percent from 2008 to 2010. First Solar also reported that the 3.3 gigawatts of photovoltaic (PV) solar modules produced by the company through 2010 are being used globally to displace over 2 million metric tons of CO2e emissions per year for their 25+ year product life.
CDP encourages companies to measure and report their carbon emissions to accelerate solutions to climate change.
"Like CDP, we at First Solar are focused on accelerating solutions to climate change and have taken a leadership role in measuring and reporting our carbon footprint," said Lisa Krueger, First Solar's Vice President of Sustainable Development. "Solar can play a significant role in addressing climate change. We encourage other solar power companies to help accelerate solutions to climate change by measuring and disclosing their life cycle carbon footprint."
First Solar provides an economically and environmentally viable alternative to fossil-fuel electricity generation. One of the advantages of First Solar's thin-film PV technology is that it has, on a life cycle basis, the smallest carbon footprint and the fastest energy payback time of commercially available PV technologies, allowing PV to scale rapidly while achieving carbon reductions. The company's product life cycle management approach also led to the development and implementation of the solar industry's first prefunded module collection and recycling program—an industry benchmark for environmental responsibility.
The CDP was launched in 2000 to accelerate solutions to climate change by putting relevant information at the heart of business, policy and investment decisions, and plays an important role in encouraging companies to measure and manage their direct and indirect carbon emissions and broader environmental footprint. Some 3,000 organizations in 60 countries around the world now measure and disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate change strategies through CDP in order that they can set reduction targets and make performance improvements.