Atlassian admits it has failed to meet its ambitious carbon emissions targets
Vindication arrived on Monday — sweet vindication, you might say, the kind that makes you want to phone everyone who’s ever doubted you – with the release of Atlassian’s Sustainability Report for 2025, which revealed that not only did the company fail to meet its climate targets, but that it missed them last year too. And the year before that.
They didn’t just miss them but extravagantly overshot them to the point where you wonder what’s the point of these targets. Lots of companies set them for themselves, but Atlassian refuses to fail quietly. No. They fail while lecturing everyone else on how to save the planet.
And no one can really reach these targets. Not really. Not without turning off all the computers and going back to living in caves and eating moss. Atlassian tries to by buying carbon offsets – which is the corporate equivalent of saying, “I know I’ve been bad, but I’ve sent $20 to Greenpeace, so we’re all good, yeah?” – to make up for the fact their data centres consume more electricity than New Zealand.
Does anyone mind? Not really. You don’t. We don’t. Just like no one cares if Mecca or Myer hit their emission targets. But here’s the problem: Atlassian won’t shut up about it. They go on and on and on like Baptist preachers shouting about “commitments” and saving the planet, and that’s when everyone gets annoyed.
Atlassian’s co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes even wrote in his CEO letter that “commitment goes beyond statements”. Except it doesn’t go beyond statements at Atlassian. It is, in fact, entirely composed of statements.
And statements – meaningless, noncommittal statements – are all these climate warriors ever have in the end. Unrealistic production targets that make you snort with laughter. Rubbish timelines. Cost predictions that blow out like a renovation at James Symonds’ house.
Look at Andrew Forrest. Out he swans, giving speeches to say he’s going to produce 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen by 2030.
Breathless press statements follow. And then what happens? He scraps it. Just bins the whole project because of “commercial realities”, which is billionaire-speak for “it costs money and I’m not insane”.
Same thing with his AGL tie-up in the Hunter Valley. Fanfare, press releases, commitments … until it “didn’t stack up”, and then everyone moves along like nothing happened.
But Atlassian really does take the biscuit here. They’ve got a little booklet called Don’t #@!% the Planet, which they hand out to other companies, complete with a pledge for them to sign like primary school kids promising not to run in the hallway. Meanwhile, according to their own meticulously documented numbers, Atlassian is #@!%ing the planet harder and harder each year in cold, measurable carbon tonnes.
Have a look at the numbers.
Emissions from purchased goods and services? Up 173 per cent in the past five years. Capital goods? Up 23 per cent. Employee commutes? Up 122 per cent. Total Scope 3 upstream emissions? Up 136 per cent. That’s all the carbon being belched out by office supplies, data centres, computers, flights, hotels, rental cars and customer visits – the whole grotesque carnival of corporate existence. All of it, going up. Dramatically.
But the best bit, what makes this all a bit absurd, is Cannon-Brookes’ private jet. Which he says he bought for security purposes. Business travel, which includes Mike’s Bombardier Global – went up 13 per cent this year to 39,297 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent.
That might not sound too bad until you realise the target was 14,105 tonnes. The target, therefore, was less than half of what Atlassian produced. The company didn’t just miss the target. They lapped it. Twice.
Jessica Hyman, with the job of chief sustainability officer, admitted that “business travel emissions are moving in the wrong direction”. Understatement of the year. Compared to the 2019 baseline, business travel emissions are up a whopping 135 per cent. Which means they’re doubling every five years.
But, again, really, no one cares. We already know Atlassian won’t meet its target next year, either. We know because they can’t. Not without strong-arming Amazon and Google into powering their data centres with batteries and good intentions, and not without convincing every single supplier to bend the knee and completely change how they do business.
And nobody wants to do that. Just like nobody wants to become a vegan and live in a yurt. They just want other people to think they’re the sort of person who would, which is completely different.
So, bravo Atlassian, for proving the targets are rubbish, that the commitments mean nothing, and that the only thing being achieved is trying to look good – while being very noisy about it.
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