29.1

Million Dollars

in 2020 revenue

312

Distributors

ClearOne sells their products directly to 312 distributors worldwide

5.5

Million Dollars

spent on R&D in 2020

View Our Analysis

The Path to Drawdown: Telepresence

From multipurpose-room systems, immersive telepresence, desktop systems, videophones, and cloud-based software systems, telepresence comes in many forms. Yet what they all have in common is that they can replace flying for business meetings and reduce overall air and land transportation.

Air travel is estimated to account for ~2.5% of global CO2 emissions. That’s more than 700 million tons of CO2 annually. A big chunk of this is from business air travel.

By integrating telepresence systems, companies, schools, hospitals, governments and museums can offer their services and facilitate communication without being in the same place. This way they can avoid emissions from commutes and business travel by air. Not only that, telepresence can help cut costs and ease employee schedules by avoiding travel, enhance meeting productivity and faster decision-making, and increase interpersonal connection across geographies.

The global market for telepresence solutions is on the rapid rise, from US$2.2 billion in 2010 to US$3.3 billion in 2014. The novel coronavirus pandemic has further accelerated this adoption.

Project Drawdown estimates that, if telepresence is adopted widely enough to replace 16-30% of global air business travel by 2050, it can help avoid between 1 - 3.8 gigatons of CO2 equivalent emissions. This would mean that between 486 - 676 million business-related trips will be replaced, US$1.2-4.4 trillion worth of business travel savings, and between 107 - 143 million fewer unproductive travel hours.

What We Want to See Improve

Disclose Sustainability Metrics

Right now, ClearOne doesn't make any sustainability information available to investors and other stakeholders. At the very least, we'd like to know the greenhouse gas emissions and the sources of energy use in ClearOne's facilities (p. 24) in Florida, Utah, Texas, Spain, and India.

Set Clear Goals

Once sustainability information is disclosed, then we want to know how ClearOne plans to reduce their environmental and carbon footprint. We think that switching to clean energy to power their facilities is a good start toward this transition.

Measure Scope 3 Emissions

Scope 3 emissions - emissions from throughout a company's value chain - often accounts for the largest emissions attributable to a company. ClearOne's products are manufactured by electronics manufacturing services providers (p. 13), meaning that ClearOne doesn't manufacture their own products. We'd like to know the level of emissions from throughout ClearOne's supply chain so that they can start taking steps to reduce them.

Related Telepresence Stocks in the Climate Index

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Allocated Company Description

4.94%

Zoom (ZM)

Zoom offers a unified digital communications platform, integrating video, phone, chat and content sharing - replacing carbon-intensive business travel

3.49%

Docusign (DOCU)

DocuSign offers products that let organizations electronically manage contracts, replacing carbon-intensive business travel

0.07%

AudioCodes Ltd. (AUDC)

AudioCodes offers VoIP network routing, media servers, and value-added applications for businesses. Telepresence cuts emissions from business air travel

0.07%

Kaltura, Inc. (KLTR)

Kaltura offers video products that are heavily used in distance learning for virtual classrooms.

0.02%

ClearOne, Inc. (CLRO)

ClearOne offers conferencing, collaboration and streaming solutions for businesses. Telepresence can help reduce emissions from business air travel

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