Barclays has released its 2006 corporate responsibility report (PDF).
The bank now says that it is “highly unlikely” that it will be able to meet its overall energy reduction targets (20 percent by 2010 against a 2000 baseline) between 2007 and 2010. “This is disappointing, but we are taking what action we can to ensure that the shortfall is as small as possible,” the report sates.
Barclays says the culprit is the future energy requirements of its UK data centers. “Their projected growth was much higher than had originally been forecast,” according to the report.
Compared with the rest of its buildings and branches, the energy needs of its data centers are very different. According to the report, “Because their requirements are so much higher, we intend to split the data centers out from the main energy reduction target, and during 2007 we will be identifying a separate performance target for them -? possibly ‘?million instructions per second’.”
Barclays says that data centres will still be part of its overall CO2 reduction and carbon intensity targets.
Its 2006 emissions of 222,773 tons CO2 result in a three percent reduction overall, which falls one percent short of the four percent per annum target.