WALTHAM, MA — In late 2008, defense contractor Raytheon met a goal of reducing its carbon intensity by a third one year ahead of schedule.

Now the company has announced a new plan for a smaller carbon footprint, which it intends to reduce 10 percent in absolute terms by 2015.

The company announced its new goal this week as part of its participation in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Leaders program. Through the program, it set a goal of cutting its emissions by 33 percent, normalized by revenue, between 2002 and 2009; by late 2008, its normalized emissions had dropped 38 percent.

The largest slice of Raytheon’s carbon footprint revolves around its energy use, so the company implemented a conservation program that has earned kudos from the EPA’s Energy Star program. The strategy involved a bevy of low-hanging fruit, such as lighting retrofits, deploying energy management and control systems, and upgrading numerous equipment types, including chillers, boilers and air conditioning systems. Internally, a network of energy champions was established to drive reduction efforts and identify new opportunities.

The company became a Climate Leaders partner to help it better understand greenhouse gas accounting, evaluate its inventory and find ways of reducing it. Raytheon lacked a program to measure its emissions before joining the program in 2002, although it has had energy reduction programs in place since the 1970s.

Other Climate Leaders partners to meet their goals this year include Exelon, which surpassed its 2008 goal by 8 percent, and Public Service Enterprise Group (PSEG), which reduced its carbon intensity by 31 percent, compared to an 18 percent reduction target.

In other Climate Leaders news, the program picked up another partner this week with the addition of Puronics, Inc., a manufacturer of water treatment products. The Livermore, Calif.-based company has an existing internal goal of reducing its fossil-fuel-derived electricity use by 50 percent.

Background image CC-licensed by Flickr user Jeff Kubina.