Yahoo! founder David Filo announces that Yahoo! is going carbon neutral [hat tip to Phil]:

Yahoo! going carbon neutral is equivalent to shutting off the electricity in all San Francisco homes for a month. Or, pulling nearly 25,000 cars off the road for a year.

Sometimes when a company announces they’re going carbon neutral it is only because they are offsetting their emissions, and not making a particularly big effort to actually reduce emissions. David goes on to mention what he terms the “controversy” over offsets, and how Yahoo! believe they’re doing it the right way:

We know carbon neutrality isn’t without controversy. And it’s honestly deserved if companies and individuals don’t first make an effort to find direct ways to reduce their impact. We’ll continue to be vigilant about cutting ours, looking for creative ways to power our facilities, encourage even more employees to seek alternative commutes, and generally inspire Yahoos around the world to think differently about their energy use

This approach is similar to the “Reduce, Renew, Offset” approach mentioned in our offsetting guide. Nice work. Google, surely, won’t be far behind…