Our journey towards net-zero
Our environmental impact matters
Being the biggest professional services firm in the world, we know that the collective actions of Deloitte’s 415,000 people can have an impact. And we must do our part to help the world achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement. Therefore, Deloitte launched WorldClimate - our strategy to drive responsible climate choices within our organisation and beyond - in FY20 to address the world’s urgent climate crisis with achievable, measurable, and science-based actions. This strategy is a development of our commitment to contributing to the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.
Collective action is essential to combat climate change. Therefore, our strategy focuses on three pillars: the actions we take, the actions we inspire our people to take, and the actions we take with others in our ecosystem. These efforts combined will enable us to accelerate the transition into a sustainable future.
To get there, we are embedding sustainability into policies and practices throughout the organisation. And we are empowering our people to make climate-friendly decisions and influence others to do the same. In doing so, we want to reduce the risks of further harm to our planet and people and to reduce the risks to our business. We want to continue working with clients and talents who share our vision of a sustainable future and who will also not accept inaction.
Deloitte’s near-term (2030) greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals have been validated by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) as 1.5 degrees Celsius-aligned, science-based targets. Deloitte has also committed itself to setting long-term emissions reduction targets using the SBTi’s Net-Zero Standard (2021).
Helping clients transition into a sustainable future
While we fully acknowledge the importance of our actions, the sustainable impact we can generate through our client work exceeds that of our operations. That is why we continue to invest significantly in our sustainability and climate offerings across our business areas. At the end of this financial year, Deloitte announced a significant expansion of our global Sustainability & Climate practice, including a USD 1 billion investment to improve our capabilities, services and assets.
One of our investments is in our global Deloitte Centre for Sustainable Progress (DCSP). In collaboration with leading academic, policy, business, and governmental organisations, the DCSP network will focus on holistic, results-oriented thought leadership, data-driven analysis, and accountability reporting to guide organisations through their sustainability journeys.
In Denmark alone, we have doubled the number of sustainability and climate experts in our practice in the past year to cater for the enormous demand for assistance and solutions. We support our clients in addressing their environmental impacts, managing climate and human rights risks, integrating sustainability goals into their business, measuring performance and impact, meeting new disclosure requirements, financing sustainable transformations across their value chains, and much more. Learn more about our sustainability and climate services here.
Driving sustainable change from within
Deloitte’s global Responsible Business Practices outline our specific goals and commitments to reduce emissions, preserve biodiversity, conserve resources, and reduce waste within our operations. At Deloitte Denmark, we promote and implement these commitments through our local policies and initiatives.
Business travel
As business travel accounts for a significant part of our CO2 emissions, we have committed ourselves to reducing our travel emissions by 50 per cent per full-time employee by 2030 compared to FY19 levels, as described in our WorldClimate strategy. This means we cannot return to the same travel habits as before the pandemic. However, in many cases, travelling is a key enabler for our work with clients and collaboration across member firms. We have, therefore, been tracking our travel habits closely in the past year to comply with our newly implemented travel policy, encouraging more sustainable behaviours such as travelling by train instead of plane when possible and choosing economy instead of business class, as well opting for video and phone conferencing whenever possible.
During FY22, we observed an increase in travel activities compared to the previous year, which was heavily affected by travel restrictions and lockdowns. As countries and offices have reopened, an increase in travel was expected, as both clients and employees had an instinctive need to meet physically after the pandemic. Despite the increase, our travel emissions for the year are still below the 2030 target objective. However, we see an upward trend in terms of the number of flight bookings and CO2 emissions accordingly, which we will monitor closely. As such, we will continue to help our people make smarter, more carbon-conscious travel choices and leverage hybrid ways of working to maintain the same high levels of service and quality. To support this, we are planning an internal campaign on how to deliver our services to clients in a more sustainable way in FY23. Additionally, we are transitioning towards the target of having a car fleet that is 100 per cent electric by 2030.
Educating our people
An important pillar in our WorldClimate strategy is to empower individuals. By engaging and educating our employees on climate change impacts – decisions about what they consume, use, and buy – we want to enable our people to make positive climate choices at home and at work. To do so, we have rolled out the WorldClimate e-learning programme ‘Rewrite our Future’ to all Deloitte employees worldwide. The 45-minute course aims to inform, challenge and inspire our people to create a more sustainable world.
In FY22, we also held the first Sustainability Learning Week across Deloitte North and South Europe (NSE). The programme was designed to boost knowledge and empower our people to use their existing expertise to address sustainability challenges. Throughout the week, employees could interact with our experts and client executives to learn about basic sustainability terms, environmental sustainability, the EU Green Deal, the EU Taxonomy, circular economy, and sustainable strategies, among many other themes.
Educating our society
As part of our Small Great Nation social impact initiative, we launched our second climate report this year. The report – ‘Green cows, Russian gas and CO2 - myths and realities’ – takes stock of the current Danish climate strategy and investigates how Denmark can reach its ambitious CO2 reduction goals with a particular focus on the current energy crisis and agriculture. By facilitating a fact-based discussion through reports, events, podcasts, and press activities, we educate and engage the public in the debate about their future - read more about the initiative here.
Greening our operations
Going forward, we will continue to impose greater sustainability requirements on our suppliers to reduce the negative environmental, social, and economic impacts of our supply chain.
We believe we are progressing towards our targets, but we also know we can and must do more to accelerate our efforts. And we will!
Our carbon footprint
We continuously work to include additional data and improve the data quality to get a more complete greenhouse gas inventory. As a result, we have expanded the scope of reporting to include purchased goods and services this year, which, understandably, have increased our total emissions.
Our carbon measurements for FY22
- At Deloitte Denmark, we emitted a total of 10,561 tons of CO2 equivalent in FY22, equalling 3.91 tons of CO2 per employee.
- A significant part of our emissions derive from purchased goods and services, which include real estate-related services, contingent labour, IT hardware, events, etc. As a result of the growing number of employees and the reintroduction of physical meetings and events among other things, our emissions from have increased. However, we are still below our pre-pandemic FY19 levels.
- While business travel traditionally accounted for a larger part of our emissions, most of FY22 was affected by travel restrictions caused by the pandemic. However, as restrictions lifted at the end of the year, our business travel emissions have increased significantly. Although we are below our 2030-travel emission target, we are seeing an upward trend, which we will monitor closely to ensure that we live up to our travel policy and, thereby, our WorldClimate goals.
- Deloitte North and South Europe (NSE), which Deloitte Denmark is part of, has purchased Energy Attribute Certificates for all electricity, thereby making it our third year to source 100 per cent renewable electricity.
- Deloitte has purchased Certified Emission Reductions at NSE level, thus offsetting our carbon footprint and making our operations and value chain carbon neutral.
Carbon emissions
This greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions statement has been calculated using an operational control consolidation approach as described in the GHG Protocol. The full methodology is outlined in the Basis of Reporting. In summary:
- Scope 1 refers to direct emissions from gas usage and our owned vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.
- Scope 2 refers to indirect emissions from the generation of our purchased electricity, district heating, and owned electric vehicles.
- Scope 3 includes our emissions from business travel, and our purchased goods and services.
This disclosure relates to Deloitte Denmark. For a review of our North & South Europe member firm, see the Deloitte NSE GHG Statement.
Limited assurance was provided by BDO LLP at a consolidated Deloitte NSE level over all reported carbon metrics. This included consideration of the underlying country data in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Malta, Middle East, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK plus Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man and Gibraltar.
Gross Total Emissions is a sum of market-based electricity data, district heating, business travel data without radiative forcing, and purchased goods and services. Location-based electricity data and business travel data with radiative forcing are included in the table to increase transparency of our reporting.
For the details of our methodology, please refer to these footnotes and Deloitte North & South Europe’s GHG Emissions Basis of Reporting.