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CEO Letter
Throughout our 40-year history, Intel has pushed the boundaries of innovation, creating products that have fundamentally changed the way people live and work. But what we make possible goes well beyond our product roadmap. By working with others, we are finding opportunities to apply our technology and expertise to help tackle some of the world’s greatest challenges—from climate change and water conservation to education quality and the digital divide.
Our commitment to corporate responsibility is unwavering, even during economic downturns. Taking a proactive, integrated approach to managing our impact on local communities and the environment not only benefits people and our planet, but is good for our business. Making corporate responsibility an integral part of Intel’s strategy helps us mitigate risk, build strong relationships with our stakeholders, and expand our market opportunities.
While I am proud of the many recognitions that we have received—including our number one spot on Corporate Responsibility Officer magazine’s 100 Best Corporate Citizens list for 2008—we continue to push ourselves to do more. For over a decade, we have set formal goals in our primary corporate responsibility focus areas, helping to drive accountability and continuous improvement. In 2008, we set new five-year environmental goals in key areas such as emissions reduction and water conservation. And to help focus all of our employees on environmental sustainability, we aligned a portion of our employees’ compensation with environmental criteria for the first time.
In 2008, we became the largest purchaser of green power in the U.S., according the U.S. EPA. We also built the first solar installations at Intel facilities, and our venture capital arm, Intel Capital, invested $100 million to support firms that are developing solar technologies. With the 2008 release of the Intel® Core™ i7 processor, we continued to demonstrate leadership in driving both high levels of performance and energy efficiency in our products. In addition, working diligently on water management, we reduced our fresh-water needs by 3 billion gallons per year. We are making progress, but we continue to face longer term challenges in reducing our absolute environmental footprint due to our growth and the increasing complexity of our manufacturing processes. Addressing these challenges will be a strategic priority in the coming years.
In education, we surpassed the milestone of training 6 million teachers worldwide through the Intel® Teach Program. In addition, we partnered with governments to support the advancement of their education programs, and helped put affordable, portable, Intel-powered classmate PCs into the hands of students in close to 40 countries. We announced a joint business venture with Grameen Trust, using a “social business” model aimed at applying technology to address issues related to education, poverty, and healthcare in developing countries.
At the heart of our commitment to corporate responsibility are Intel’s more than 80,000 employees. Early in 2008, I challenged them to give 1 million hours of volunteer service to local communities in celebration of our 40th anniversary. In true Intel style, our employees didn’t just meet the goal, they surpassed it in early December, and by the end of the year they had donated 1,346,471 hours to more than 5,000 schools and nonprofit organizations around the world.
I believe this achievement—over 1 million hours of service in a single year—captures the essence of corporate responsibility at Intel. It’s an example of the commitment, energy, and innovative spirit that are synonymous with the Intel name. Quite simply, we do what we say and help make the impossible possible.
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Paul S. Otellini
President and Chief Executive Officer
back to topCorporate responsibility report resources
- Complete 2008 reportFiletype/Size: PDF 4.39MB
- Report data & archives
- Contact Intel CR team
About the corporate responsibility report
- Reporting guidelines (GRI Index)Filetype/Size: PDF 728KB
- 2008 report dataFiletype/Size: PDF 4.39MB
- Corporate responsibility goal summary
- Performance summary

