Earth Overshoot Day 2018 - First Solar’s Pledge to #MoveTheDate

Every year since the 1960’s, humanity has consistently used more of the planet’s resource budget, than what the Earth’s ecosystem can renew in that year.

Using Ecological Footprint accounting, the Global Footprint Network calculates the day in a given year when all of the Earth’s resources for that year have been consumed and humanity starts living beyond its means.

This year, Earth Overshoot Day has moved forward, yet again, showing us that we would currently need about 1.7 Earths to sustain our current way of living.

One might argue that over the last few decades – and especially the last 18 years – humanity has made a lot of progress in tackling some of the most pressing human development challenges. Looking back at the Millennium Summit of the United Nations in 2000 and the ambitious Millennium Development Goals, unprecedented efforts have been undertaken by many countries to make significant progress in eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, promoting gender equality and empowering women, reducing child mortality, improving maternal health and combating diseases. Countries like China and India, in particular, have taken enormous steps forward in addressing these problems.

However, as the stunning trajectory of Earth Overshoot Day illustrates, the most fundamental nexus between resource use, environmental impact and human development has yet to be universally decoupled.

Contributing to the effort to decouple that nexus is at the heart of First Solar’s vision to lead the world’s sustainable energy future through the provision of cost-advantaged solar technology – a key enabler in the effort to #MoveTheDate!

Embracing the concepts of lifecycle thinking, eco design and circular economy, First Solar is continuously improving the environmental footprint of its technology, which, in turn, helps our customers decouple their growth from resource use and environmental impacts.

With the First Solar Series 6 module, we have yet again raised the bar for sustainable PV by addressing environmental hotspots through upfront eco design of our product and reducing our PV module resource use and emissions profiles on a life cycle basis.

However, it is also our strong belief that a company has to broaden its view on Sustainability to encompass all dimensions related to it. As a result, our internal and external sustainability engagement programs are built on the foundations of Leading by Example and Empowering the Next Generation. In line with our sustainability strategy, First Solar has identified a set of five Sustainable Development Goals, which form the core of our vision and mission.

As part of our sustainability program, we are committing to empowering the next generation through education for sustainable development, while ensuring access to clean energy and water by decoupling the energy-water nexus. We are also focused on promoting economic inclusion, diversity and equal opportunity to reduce inequality, and enabling a circular economy to ensure sustainable and responsible consumption.

We take our vision to lead the world’s sutainable energy future seriously, and ensuring that we remain focused on delivering on these themes will allow us to contribute to the broader effort to #MoveTheDate.