About BraveGen
Environmental Sustainability in the Cloud
At BraveGen, we measure our success not only in financial terms, but also by how we operate in the community and environment. We are committed to reducing—and whenever possible, eliminating—any negative environmental impact while benefiting the communities in which we live and work.
Our sustainability efforts focus on the environmental, social, and economic issues that help create and sustain long-term success for all. To enjoy a healthy economy that fosters human potential, we need to sustain a healthy planet as a foundation for our economy.
Our approach to environmental stewardship focuses on the impacts that are most material to our business as a cloud software company. These include our carbon footprint, investments in renewable energy, reducing and responsibly disposing of our e-waste, and engaging with our employees to maximize their collective impact on how we operate.
The cloud is green.
BraveGen’s multi-tenant cloud architecture helps customers reduce business costs and carbon footprints by centralizing server processing, optimizing energy usage, and eliminating redundant equipment. BraveGen’s data centers are optimized for processing, energy, and cooling efficiency.
Zero carbon emissions
BraveGen is committed to maintaining net-zero carbon emissions. Our carbon management strategy is to avoid carbon-intensive activities where possible, focus on reducing the carbon intensity of our operations through efficiency measures, replace high-carbon energy sources with low-carbon energy sources, and offset the remaining emissions.
As a business that primarily provides cloud software and consulting services, our company’s environmental footprint consists mostly of travel, accommodation and electricity consumption. We always offset our air travel and accommodation (where possible) at the time of purchasing those services. And the significant majority of our electricity consumption is renewable.
100% renewable energy.
All of our servers are hosted with Amazon Web Servers (AWS), the global leader in data centres. We use the AWS data centres in Sydney, Australia, which are “carbon neutral“. It covers all our production, staging and testing environments, our website, email and file servers and disaster recovery services.
And BraveGen supports the development of clean energy projects by committing to use 100% renewable electricity in our office buildings wherever possible. This currently includes our global headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand. And we are working with our landlords in Melbourne and Singapore to switch to renewable energy providers.
No landfill policy.
BraveGen ensures the secure disposal of all electronics. We maximize the reuse of equipment when possible and dispose all remaining items responsibly by adhering to the strict e-Stewards standard.
Our carbon footprint
In August of 2020 we completed our first formal greenhouse gas emissions inventory report. This covers the period from April 1st, 2019 to March 31st, 2020, and aligns our emissions declaration with our financial year. We also established financial year 2019/2020 (FY20) to be our baseline year and have reported our emissions for the previous financial year (FY19).
Where we had previously estimated our emissions and then applied a 2.5 times multiplier, we now have an accurate measurement of the direct and indirect emissions.
We purchased Indigenous forest VERs (Verified Emissions Reduction Units) to achieve a carbon neutral status.
Our GHG Inventory is independently verified by Ekos. (2019, 2020)
Key insights from our emissions report:
- Total emissions across scopes 1, 2, and 3 were just under 20 tons of CO2 equivalent for FY19
- This increased to just over 30 tons of CO2 equivalent for FY20
- At our current headcount this equates to 2.5 tons per FTE for FY20, which is effectively unchanged from FY19.
- Our direct scope 1 and 2 emissions decreased, primarily due to switching to a carbon neutral electricity supplier
- Scope 3 emissions accounted for 94% of the total
- Increased emissions from air travel led to our overall increased emissions.
