F5’s climate target at the halfway point

Katherine ClouseSenior Director, Environment, Social & Governance | F5

F5 has made real progress since we set our science-based target to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Over the span of five years, we reduced 23% of emissions from our operations and 32% of emissions from our value chain. Given the pace at which F5’s business has grown over the same period, every metric ton of carbon we cut was hard-won.

Since 2021, F5 has reduced its operational emissions by 23% and its value chain emissions by 32%, making substantial progress toward its 2030 goal.

But amidst the trade-offs that come with achieving any form of sustainable growth emerge the real drivers of our emissions reductions so far:

• Ruthless prioritization: If we can’t see a material, long-term impact within our emissions inventory and a direct benefit to our customers, it’s not a priority. Environmental “anecdata” and performative sustainability gestures are a waste of all our precious resources.
• Sustainable products: Prioritizing more sustainable design and energy performance in our software, SaaS, and hardware products is the single most impactful work we do to reduce F5’s emissions. Most importantly, it helps our customers reduce their energy consumption and costs.

• Sustainable sites: F5 leases dozens of offices and co-working spaces around the world, and each requires a careful balance between the needs of our stakeholders with the realities of each site’s efficiency, accessibility and utility grid. As the “return-to-office’ and energy-intensive work (e.g. AI) ramps up, the more deliberate F5’s sustainable site choices become. Our recent decisions to relocate to “green” offices in Spokane, Washington and Weybridge, United Kingdom are a case in point.
• Renewable energy: Like so many other companies, we invest in clean energy not simply to meet our emissions reductions goals, but because stable, lower-cost electricity improves gird resilience as power demand (especially for AI) surges worldwide. F5 reached 38% renewable energy consumption in fiscal year 2025, powered by the wind and solar projects in the U.S.
• Clean data: It’s far from glamorous, but absolutely nothing beats the clarity that comes from relentless improvements to the methodology, data collection, and governance of an emissions inventory. Over the last two years, F5 has re-baselined its entire Scope 1 and 2 (operational emissions) and Scope 3 (value chain emissions) back to fiscal year 2021 and learned more from “cleaning” our data than perhaps any other work we’ve done as a team.

We still have plenty of lessons to learn (and no doubt relearn!) as we pursue our 2030 targets to reduce our Scope 1 & 2 emissions by 50% and reduce our Scope 3 emissions by 43%. But, at the halfway point, we celebrate the wins that have brought us this far and recognize the same efforts of so many other companies with science-based targets.  We share the same ambitions for sustainable growth.

To learn more, please see our most recent Environmental, Social and Governance Report.

About the Author

Katherine ClouseSenior Director, Environment, Social & Governance | F5

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