One of tech’s cleanest companies is making tools for coal mines and oil drills

Autodesk Inc. is proud of its bona fides as a clean company – it reports dwindling emissions and invests millions in technology aimed at improving the environment. 

There’s one hitch: its software is used to design and operate machinery for the biggest coal mine complex in Europe. Production at the pits, owned by German energy giant RWE AG, is being expanded ahead of a 2030 phase-out of the highly polluting energy source. Climate activist Greta Thurnberg was detained there in January at a protest.

Artist Joanie Lemercier was at that protest, too. He’s been in a multiyear campaign against Autodesk — disrupting events, heckling executives and arguing the San Francisco-based company can't call itself green unless it stops selling software to the fossil fuel industry.

Activists have long jeered banks for financing companies involved in the production of energy from sources that pollute the envirnoment with carbon emissions. Fewer have examined the technology industry’s links with firms that are hastening climate change. And just like the big banks, Autodesk simply isn't willing to drop clients some consider problematic.

“I appreciate the passion. I disagree with the proposed solutions,” Joe Speicher, vice president of sustainability at Autodesk, said of Lemercier’s protests. “We can’t have a transition to a renewable energy future without involving the oil and gas companies.”

Speicher cited the European energy crisis after the start of the war in Ukraine as an example of why society can’t quickly ditch fossil fuels. “I don’t believe cutting off a customer or an industry – specifically one that’s lawfully tasked with meeting the energy needs of a country – is the right response.”

Though not a household name, Autodesk has helped shape the world the past 40 years with its industrial design software. Tesla’s cars, PetroBras’ oil drills, the One World Trade Center in New York and Saudi Arabia’s massive luxury tourism development along the Red Sea were designed with Autodesk software, according to promotional materials. Its portfolio of more than 50 applications generates about $5 billion in sales a year.

Due to its indispensable role in heavy industry, Lemercier criticized Autodesk as maybe the “most polluting software company on the planet.” The underlying question is whether technology companies are responsible for how their products are used. Lemercier argued the fossil fuel industry doesn’t just happen to buy Autodesk’s products the way anyone could purchase Word, Microsoft Corp.’s ubiquitous text-processing software. Instead, Autodesk courts polluters with industry-specific tools, he said.

Speicher said Autodesk’s software helps clients meet climate goals, and customers seek out the company due to its sustainability focus. He added that the firm’s foundation spends millions each year on low-carbon technology and philanthropy.

It’s no wonder the company dismisses the activist’s claims – its reported emissions are leaps and bounds lower than most similarly valued companies in a variety of industries, such as Ford Motor Co., Truist Financial Corp. and Pizza Hut-owner Yum! Brands Inc. As a software maker, Autodesk is able to profit from sales to heavy industry without having to claim any of the environmental issues associated with those clients, such as the carbon emissions generated by the German coal mine. Instead, the vast majority of Autodesk’s own emissions are created indirectly by, for example, purchasing cloud computing power or employee air travel, according to its submission to the Climate Disclosure Project.

While in line with standard reporting rules, that doesn’t absolve Autodesk of ethical questions, said Shannon Lloyd, who researches corporate climate reporting at Concordia University in Montreal. “Does Autodesk want to be a company that publicizes its initiatives to be net zero but at the same time creates products for oil and gas companies?” she said.

High-emissions projects will continue regardless of Autodesk’s role, Chief Executive Officer Andrew Anagnost argued in a 2019 Twitter exchange with Lemercier. Still, he conceded that clients like the RWE coal mine aren’t a point of pride: “at the least, we don’t need to highlight it as a success story,” he wrote.

The case study about Autodesk’s work with RWE was removed from the software company’s website shortly after the CEO’s Twitter spat with the activist. Today, Autodesk highlights sustainability-focused stories, almost none of which mention non-renewable energy. A spokesperson said fossil fuel firms make up a “very small” share of business, though the company doesn’t disclose revenue by industry.

“Maybe that coal plant is a one-off – or maybe it’s their top client – we have no idea. That lack of disclosure is a reputational and business risk,” said Jaclyn Allen of SalterBaxter, a firm that consults with companies like Ford and T-Mobile Inc. on sustainability strategy and communications. “They need to be clear on their approach and management of that high-emissions customer base,” she said. 

That could mean reducing dependence on the sector over time, only working with companies engaged in energy transition, or not renewing contracts with problematic actors, Allen added.

It’s rare that technology companies drop customers on ethical grounds. Amazon.com Inc., Microsoft and Alphabet Inc.’s Google – the three largest US cloud computing providers – faced employee protests over helping clients like Chevron find oil more effectively after a 2020 Greenpeace report. Only Google said it would stop developing algorithms for the industry. Employee protests at  Salesforce Inc. for working with US Customs and Border Protection and the National Rifle Association similarly had little effect.

Lemercier, who isn’t an Autodesk employee or investor, makes an unlikely antagonist. The visual artist used Autodesk tools for years before becoming obsessed with the German coal mine a two-hour drive from where he lives in Belgium. He was shocked to realize the mine was also an Autodesk customer. Knowing he had little sway over a company like RWE, Lemercier decided to try to pressure the software company to pull out of the project and others like it. “I feel very connected to them — I’m a user, I’ve visited them in San Francisco, a lot of my friends did residencies there.”

The company has sought to blunt his impact, distributing a Lemercier “mitigation plan” ahead of its 2020 conference that encouraged employees to block or ignore him on social media and provided talking points in response to his criticisms. A spokesperson said this was to “provide advice to large groups of employees and customers who were on the receiving end of unwanted emails and comments.’’

Lemercier knows Autodesk isn’t the only company complicit in projects that harm the climate — he just hoped it would be the one that listened. Earlier this year, he drew portraits of CEO Anagnost, bank executives and German politicians — people he says are behind the environmental damage — using coal-based ink and posed them in front of the mine.

“As an artist, I feel a little useless when it comes to reducing global C02 emissions,” Lemercier said. “I’m doing desperate attempts.”