As we celebrate The Climate Pledge’s fifth anniversary this month, we caught up with key leaders at some of our signatory and partner companies to learn about their progress and their vision for the climate future.

Christina Shim's career has spanned industries and public and private sectors, but she’s always been focused on how to make the biggest impact. We caught up with Shim a few months after IBM promoted her from its Sustainability Software division to Chief Sustainability Officer to discuss what’s next.

The Climate Pledge: IBM is a leader in corporate sustainability. How would you describe its history with climate action?  

Shim: One of the reasons I was so excited to join IBM is our incredible legacy in the environmental leadership space. Former IBM CEO Thomas Watson Jr. actually issued our first corporate environmental policy back in 1971, so our work on climate spans over 50 years. In 1990, we started disclosing our performance on a slew of different environmental measures, including waste, energy, emissions, and renewables. More recently, we supported the Paris Agreement in 2015, became a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council in 2019, and in 2021 we committed to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

That history speaks a lot to the foundation on which IBM's environmental sustainability posture has been built. It set the tone that sustainability is not only important to us now but also a part of our legacy.

The Climate Pledge: IBM's goal is to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. What are the pillars of its strategy for reaching that goal?

Shim: Sustainability is much broader than just carbon counting. Let’s zoom out for a moment: Why do we care about emissions? It's because climate change affects people and it's affecting our communities. It’s increasing floods, causing heat stroke, and destroying farms and livelihoods. Insurance is becoming unaffordable. We care because it's affecting our daily lives no matter where we live. Our goals reflect that broad view. We have 21 sustainability goals that address energy, biodiversity, climate change, waste, pollution, renewables, and emissions. So it's not just net zero for the sake of net zero. Our approach has always been about embedding sustainability across our business and value chain. 

The business community has woken up to the importance of reducing emissions across the value chain in recent years, but at IBM, we've always taken this more holistic approach to climate action. Since 2010, we've required first-tier suppliers to establish their own environmental management systems, as well as publicly disclose progress on quantifiable goals for energy management, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and waste management.

In terms of how we reach those goals, investing in new emerging technologies is, of course, a huge part of how we get there faster. Across the company, we often talk about IBM as “Client Zero.” We embed our own sustainability-focused technologies—everything from artificial intelligence to data management—directly into IBM. We then take those learnings back to our clients and help them implement and operationalize sustainability, leveraging our technology across their respective enterprises. Treating ourselves as a client allows us to credibly answer some of the complicated questions our clients have. 

Our goal was to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 65% against our 2010 base by 2025. We achieved that milestone two years early, avoiding 256,000 megawatt hours of energy consumption. Still, every company has a lot more to do. We're on a journey. As the business and the dynamics of the sustainability landscape continue to evolve, we will just have to continue to evolve with them. 

The Climate Pledge: How does IBM think about its role as a climate leader within the broader business ecosystem? How are you both directly and indirectly influencing the actions of other companies?

Shim: There’s such a huge opportunity for innovation around the intersection of technology and climate, which is where we see ourselves leading. Take our research colleagues, who push the boundaries of science and innovation. We announced the world's first chip with 2 nanometer chip technology, which achieves a 45% higher performance and uses 75% less energy than most current 7 nanometer chips, just a few years ago.

Last year, when I led our Sustainability Software team, IBM announced a landmark collaboration with NASA. We worked with them to build a geospatial foundation model that we released as open source. This year, we expanded that model to include weather and climate so that our customers have the data they need to evaluate climate risk and support biodiversity conservation. 

With AI in particular, we feel that the world is our oyster. We’re really intentional about how we approach AI development; I’m on the IBM AI ethics board. We think that by being deliberate and thoughtful about what problems you try to solve with AI and rightsizing the models needed for those problems, you can use AI more sustainably and also accelerate your sustainability journey using AI. We’re trying to be a model for what that intentional, sustainable approach to AI looks like for other businesses. 

The Climate Pledge: How does the IBM Sustainability Accelerator fit into your broader sustainability strategy? Why is community collaboration crucial to that initiative's success? 

Shim: Our focus on climate change is about our communities and empowering the people living there. The IBM Sustainability Accelerator is about realizing that mission at the local community level. It’s a pro bono program that uses IBM’s technologies and expertise to enhance and scale existing public and social sector initiatives that target the most vulnerable communities around the world. Each year, we pick a different focus area, which in the past has included everything from clean energy to water management and sustainable agriculture. This year, we’re focused on resilient cities. The accelerator gives us a different way to create impact outside of the business-to-business context by partnering directly with the likes of Appalachian communities or small-holder farmers in Malawi. 

The Climate Pledge: Why would you recommend that companies that are ambitious about climate action join The Climate Pledge? 

Shim: No one company or organization can solve climate change. In the last few years, it's become clearer that this is a collective effort. It is everyone's responsibility, from governments and corporations to broader society, to aim in the same direction and work to reduce our environmental impact to support the most vulnerable communities. We’re not getting there fast enough alone, so it’s the combined effort of collaborations like The Climate Pledge that will move the needle.

Learn more about IBM’s sustainability productions and solutions here, and IBM’s commitment to sustainability here.