Dow Jones & Company

The News Corporation, the media conglomerate and parent company of Fox News Channel, has gone carbon-neutral, fulfilling a goal set four years ago, Rupert Murdoch, the company’s chairman, announced this week in a companywide memo.

“We have become carbon-neutral across all of our global operations, and we are the first company of our kind to do so,” Mr. Murdoch wrote. “We made a bold commitment in 2007 to embed the values of energy efficiency and environmental sustainability into all of our businesses — for the benefit of our communities and our bottom line.”

Mr. Murdoch added that improving the energy efficiency of the company’s day-to-day operations had not only curbed emissions but also “saved millions of dollars.”



“Our efficiency projects pay for themselves in less than two years, on average, and span from simple solutions like lighting retrofits and automatic PC shut-down to systemic changes like installing telepresence and videoconferencing technology to reduce the need for air travel,” he wrote.

According to the memo, the News Corporation’s businesses in Britain now obtain 100 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. Dow Jones, the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, which the News Corporation acquired in 2007, is nearing completion of a 4.1-megawatt solar power system on its corporate campus in New Jersey that would provide nearly half of the facility’s electrical needs at peak capacity.

The company’s achievement was praised by Lisa P. Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, as she testified on Thursday at a budget hearing of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

Ms. Jackson noted that while many Republicans — and such Fox News Channel commentators as Sarah Palin — argue that mandated reductions in carbon dioxide emissions would be fatal to the economy, the News Corporation had cut its emissions and reaped financial benefits.

“I do believe that this is good for business, good for our future,” she said.

Republicans in the House and Senate formally introduced legislation this week that would permanently strip the E.P.A.’s power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions under the Clean Air Act. The legislation’s backers, Senator James Inhofe, Republican of Oklahoma, and Representative Fred Upton, Republican of Michigan, explicitly argue that carbon controls would function as a hidden tax on businesses and hobble economic growth.