We're at the industry vanguard in terms of emission reductions - cutting both our own carbon impact and helping clients achieve net zero through strategies, services and solutions that reduce operational and embodied carbon now and forever.
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These key commitments will ladder up towards achieving our bigger ESG goals and our broader aim of delivering sustainable legacies for generations to come.
We’ve reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions, covering fleet and office energy respectively, by 61% from our FY18 baseline year using key travel and real estate initiatives.
This included right-sizing our office space, improving office energy efficiency, and implementing sustainability guidelines for future office refurbishments and re-locations. Our Workplace of the Future and Freedom to Grow initiatives helped increase work flexibility and allowed further real estate consolidation and travel reductions. We are also replacing older vehicles, making better use of telematics to improve driving efficiency, transitioning to hybrid and electric vehicles where available and providing office EV charging infrastructure where feasible. Remaining emissions were partly compensated for by purchasing Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) equivalent to our electricity consumption for North America. These reduction initiatives are important to maintain operational net zero status, and keep us on track with science-based net zero by 2040.
1. Decarbonizing fleet vehicles and increasing renewable energy use (to maintain operational net zero status, achieve 60 percent reduction by 2030, and 90% reduction by 2040 in Scope 1 and 2 emissions)
Acknowledging that the majority of our emissions are in our supply chain, we have developed and implemented a Supplier Engagement Strategy.
An element of this has been sending out a Request for Information (RFI) to 7,700 suppliers and trade contractors making up over 80% of our total supply chain emissions. This RFI aims to help us understand what suppliers are doing on carbon, including what data and targets they have to inform our continued engagement and reduction initiatives. This engagement covers all divisions of the business, including AECOM Construction Management (CM), which makes up majority of supply chain emissions, by virtue of its role sourcing and managing trade contractors and construction materials on behalf of AECOM clients. The information from this RFI is currently being analyzed to inform our continued engagement and reduction initiatives (such as ESG selection criteria and controls), to encourage setting science-based targets and implementing low carbon practices.
2. Developing carbon reduction targets in partnership with our supply chain (to achieve 50 percent reduction by 2030, and 90% reduction by 2040 in Scope 3 emissions)
We Travel with Purpose
We are reducing business travel emissions by implementing our Travel with Purpose guidance, prioritizing digital tools instead of travelling (for business and commuting). If travel is necessary, we're prioritizing sustainable modes of travel such as walking, cycling, public transportation and zero emissions vehicles in conjunction with a location-specific risk assessment. As part of this a business travel environmental taskforce has been launched and we have already seen a substantial reduction in operational travel.
3. Reducing business travel emissions (to achieve 50 percent reduction by 2030, and 90% reduction by 2040 in Scope 3 emissions)
Initiated work on our own pilot natural climate solution projects for carbon sequestration.
These projects could work through ecosystem conservation, restoration or habitat creation, which will also support biodiversity enhancement and improve social outcomes for local communities. This is utilizing our technical expertise gained from projects such as the Natural Capital Laboratory and by forming external partnerships with project development partners to scale support for climate, people and nature. This work is partly to support our operational net zero commitment and will also to contribute to offsetting for science-based net zero form 2040. While these projects are being developed, we will continue to retire high quality carbon credits from external sources. For example, in 2021 we retired carbon credits from a portfolio of wind power projects to support global energy system decarbonization.