At Cisco, our purpose is simple yet powerful: to power an inclusive future for all.
But to achieve a truly inclusive future, we must also support a more sustainable one—a future where the health of our planet is protected for generations to come. Recognizing this, in 2023, our Chief Sustainability Officer, Mary de Wysocki, introduced Cisco’s ambitious environmental sustainability strategy, the "Plan for Possible.” In her blog post, “The Plan for Possible: Connecting a Regenerative Future,” Mary outlined a bold approach for Cisco’s role in environmental sustainability through three essential focus areas:
Transition to Clean Energy
Evolve the Business to Circular
Invest in Resilient Ecosystems
Cisco is making significant strides in our sustainability journey. For example, our Silicon One chip enables networks that are fast, flexible and energy efficient, advancing our commitment to efficiency and performance. Additionally, programs like the Cisco Takeback and Reuse Program and Cisco Refresh support our circularity goals by extending the lifecycle of devices through remanufacturing, reuse, and recycling, effectively reducing electronic waste.
However, creating a more sustainable future requires collaboration and scale, which is why we’re investing beyond our own initiatives. Aligned with our “Plan for Possible,” Cisco Investments is helping to advance our sustainability goals by investing in transformative companies focused on clean energy and circularity. Through external innovation, we aim to scale solutions that address both Cisco’s and our customers’ sustainability needs.
“There is incredible innovation taking place in the climate technology space and our goal is to enable these solutions by investing in companies that align with our environmental sustainability goals,” says de Wysocki. “We’re backing early-stage start-ups that bring breakthrough ideas to life and supporting them to scale their impact to address the challenges our planet faces. These investments don’t just provide capital—they serve as a signal to the broader market on what we value and where we believe the future is headed.”
De Wysocki's team and the Cisco Foundation exemplify this commitment. In 2021, the Foundation committed $100 million over ten years to fund early-stage climate innovation, with half going to nonprofit grants and half going to start-ups and venture funds through the Regenerative Future Fund. This climate investment program prioritizes resilient ecosystems and reflects Cisco’s dedication to impactful climate action and ecosystem resilience, backing the innovations essential to a regenerative planet.
Cisco Investments is accelerating this mission by identifying and supporting external innovations that further Cisco’s corporate sustainability goals and those of our customers. It is in this spirit that Cisco Investments is proud to announce its first sustainability-focused investments in CorPower Ocean and DESCycle. These pioneering companies embody the vision and strategy at the heart of the "Plan for Possible," driving us closer to a more sustainable future.
Investing in Clean Energy with CorPower Ocean
One of the priorities of the “Plan for Possible” is the transition to clean energy. As a core part of this priority, Cisco has set an ambitious goal to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions across our value chain by 2040. Increasing our use of renewable energy and supporting the global transition to clean energy will be critical to addressing this goal.
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar have made significant advancements in a short time, but alone they’re not enough.
The sun doesn’t always shine, and the wind doesn’t always blow. This is why it is important to diversify energy sources.
There is a third energy source that is virtually always churning.
"Wave energy has the ability to be a very consistent power profile,” says Patrik Möller, co-founder and CEO of CorPower Ocean. “You add wave together with a mix of wind and solar, you can get much closer to 24/7 supply."
In an era where data centers and AI are driving higher power needs, the demand for reliable and continuous energy sources is more critical than ever. Data centers, which power the backbone of our digital world, consume more than 1% of the world’s electricity, according to the International Energy Agency. AI applications, with their intensive requirements, further amplify this demand. Ensuring a steady and more sustainable energy supply is essential to support these technologies and reduce their environmental impact.
This is where CorPower’s opportunity lies. Their customers are looking to build wave farms along the Atlantic Arc, including in Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, and Norway. Just one of CorPower Ocean’s wave energy buoys can generate up to 300 kilowatts (kW) of power. A farm deployed with 100 networked buoys could provide up to 22 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per month.
To put that in perspective, the average U.S. household uses about 900 kWh of electricity per month, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. This means each farm could power around 25,000 homes.
"Wave energy is probably the largest untapped source of clean energy out there,” says Möller. “So, after solar and wind, wave is a huge opportunity. The opportunity is bigger than all the nuclear or all the hydro capacity of the world."
By integrating wave energy into the renewable mix, we can overcome the limitations of solar and wind power, moving closer to a future where clean energy is available around the clock.
Innovating in E-waste Recycling with DEScycle
Waste remains a pervasive issue across the globe, particularly with the rising volume of electronic devices contributing to a surge in electronic waste. According to the Global E-Waste Monitor 2024 provided by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, global e-waste is expected to reach 82 million metric tons by 2030, an increase of 33% from 2022. Alarmingly, only 22.3% of 2022's e-waste was formally collected and recycled, meaning the vast majority is either discarded in landfills, incinerated, or improperly managed. The total value of precious metals in e-waste generated in 2022 is estimated to be around $91 billion USD, much of which is lost due to low recycling rates.
This is why Cisco is committed to incorporating Circular Design Principles – such as designing for disassembly, repair, and reuse – into all of our new products and packaging by our 2025 fiscal year.
“Recovering e-waste is critical to reaching a circular economy. At Cisco, when we recapture valuable equipment that can be remanufactured, or harvest components and raw materials, we can decrease the need for virgin materials,” de Wysocki explains.
DEScycle offers a potentially game-changing solution. Utilizing a science-based approach, DEScycle addresses e-waste with a low-energy approach that can be conducted locally. This local processing capability reduces the need for long-distance transportation of e-waste, cutting down on emissions and costs associated with traditional recycling methods.
“Our vision and mission are to replace the reliance on energy-intensive smelters with something that is sustainable and forward-facing, providing an actual solution without negative environmental impacts,” says Dr. Leo Howden, co-founder and CEO of DEScycle.
“DES” stands for deep eutectic solvents. These liquids are created by combining two or more simple, natural ingredients that, when mixed in the right proportions, exhibit special properties such as dissolving metals. According to From nature to innovation: The uncharted potential of natural deep eutectic solvents, they are safe, non-toxic, and biodegradable, making them a better alternative to traditional methods.
"The solution that we're bringing to the table is a chemistry approach rather than smelting, which is the incumbent state-of-the-art technology. What’s different about ours is that we're not using water or acids or chemicals to do this," explains Dr. Rob Harris, co-founder and CTO of DEScycle.
By investing in the groundbreaking technology of DEScycle, Cisco is supporting an innovative and more sustainable way to address the global e-waste crisis. This aligns with Cisco’s ambitious environmental goals to reduce the environmental footprint of electronic waste, recover valuable materials, and pave the way for a more sustainable and circular economy.
Driving Toward a Sustainable Future
Through Cisco Investments and our collaboration with corporate initiatives, Cisco is dedicated to building a more sustainable, inclusive future. Guided by the “Plan for Possible,” our vision for climate and sustainability investing, these efforts target innovation in clean energy, decarbonization, circularity, and resilient ecosystems. We’re backing companies that advance our clean energy, decarbonization, and circularity goals, paving the way for a low-carbon future and reducing waste through circular solutions.