Employee Initiative: A Good Idea Is Worth a Million Pounds of Emissions

Cisco's San Jose headquarters comprises 50 buildings and more than seven million square feet, and Energy Program Manager Nayeem Sheikh has walked almost every inch.

"I looked at air conditioning systems, lighting controls, the cafeterias, the labs, the data centers, the office spaces," he says, looking for ways to improve energy efficiency at Cisco.

For Sheikh, helping companies improve energy efficiency comes naturally. His father was the kind of man who wandered around the house, turning off lights. "In India, where electricity is scarce, anyone who has it in his home is considered rich," he says. "Power there is often unstable, so you really have a sense of its value."

And the value is more than monetary, he says. The impact on the environment of even small conservation measures can be significant: For every kilowatt hour you save, you reduce CO₂ emissions by nearly a pound.

So when Sheikh discovered 80 cents of every energy dollar spent at Cisco went to cooling the labs and data centers because the equipment there releases heat, he decided to investigate.

"Cisco has always been receptive to programs that will improve energy efficiency in the buildings," Sheikh says, "but I wanted to see an improvement in our products. Improving the heat rejection system in our equipment would save energy."

A lab management team, with the help of energy efficiency experts, worked to develop new design specifications to address the problem, and improve the products.

The benefits extend well beyond Cisco. "If our products are more energy efficient for us, they're also more energy efficient for our customers," Sheikh says. "In the U.S., I think people take energy for granted a bit, but it's something you want to use wisely, because you're going to need it tomorrow."