2. Environmental information

2.1 Climate and CO₂

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Impacts

Our day-to-day activities result in CO₂ emissions. We burn fuels to heat our buildings, purchase electricity to charge our cars and we buy airline or railway tickets to travel to international clients and attend internal network meetings. We also have suppliers who emit CO₂ to produce and transport their goods or render their services to us. The CO₂ we emit contributes to global warming which results in widely known environmental impacts such as accelerated sea level rise, more intense heat waves, loss of biodiversity, and much more. This indirectly impacts the wellbeing and safety of people around the globe, but also organisations. Extreme weather events can significantly impact sites and supply chains. This can jeopardise the continuity of our clients and thus impacts our engagements, but it also affects suppliers that provide goods or services for the operations of our own organisation.

Governance

To reduce the negative impact from our business on global warming, DTTL has adopted the WorldClimate  programme. The objective of WorldClimate is to achieve net zero for all direct and indirect CO₂ emissions by Deloitte worldwide by 2030. This science-based target is to be achieved by reducing where we can and compensating in a meaningful way where we must. The 2030 goals include:

• Reducing our business travel emissions by 50% per FTE from 2019 levels;

• Sourcing 100% renewable energy for our buildings;

• Converting 100% of our fleet to hybrid and electric vehicles;

• Engaging with our major suppliers with the goal of having two-thirds of them adopt science-based targets for  carbon reduction within five years;

• Investing in meaningful market solutions for emissions we cannot eliminate.

Other elements of WorldClimate are Embed sustainability, Empower individuals, and Engage ecosystems.

As we had already set ambitious CO₂ emission targets in our Connect for Impact strategy, we have fully embraced the WorldClimate programme and have even been able to commit to carbon neutrality for housing and mobility by 2025. This is five years ahead of the DTTL target. For other indirect emissions we follow the timeline defined by DTTL.

To realise the reduction of our CO₂ emissions we have set up a robust governance structure for internal sustainability. We have a dedicated Internal Sustainability Team in place that reports directly to the COO, and have created a Sustainable Operations Team that consists of various topic owners (housing, fleet, travel, IT, procurement, talent and communications) to design and implement policy. Our businesses are connected through a Climate Champions Network; a group of passionate sustainability adapts from across our businesses. We have also assigned senior leaders from each business to form a group of Sustainability Operational Excellence Leads. This group is responsible for embedding sustainable practices in the daily operations of their businesses.

Activities in 2021/2022

In order to achieve our CO₂ reduction targets, we have updated our mobility and travel policies at the beginning of this fiscal year.

Our mobility policy offers our employees the choice between a leased car, a cash option or public transport. When employees opt for a leased car, we encourage them to lease energy efficient cars by including the energy costs in the available lease budget. This makes choosing an energy efficient car more attractive. Furthermore, all contracts of fossil fuel cars will not extend beyond 2025 in order to phase out the use of fossil fuel powered vehicles and transition to fully electric or hydrogen powered cars. So far, the mobility policy has proved to be effective as around 70% of all new leased car orders in 2021/2022 were fully electric. However, the global chip shortage has resulted in delivery delays, which means that not all ordered electric cars are already in use.

Our updated business travel policy outlines the conditions that we have set for international travel, both in terms of approvals designed to prevent unnecessary travel - for example by switching to virtual and or hybrid meetings -, and of travel choices to prevent unnecessary CO₂ emissions and costs. In line with our reduction ambitions, we switched to rail instead of flying for short international travel where practical, and have defined additional guidance concerning travel class on international flights.

For housing, we aim to rent office space in leading energy-efficient buildings. Examples are our office in Amsterdam (‘The Edge’), which has a BREEAM Outstanding certificate, and our office in Rotterdam (‘Maastoren’). Where we are the main tenant, we purchase renewable energy. For example, we have joined the energy marketplace of GroenDus for our Eindhoven and Utrecht offices as well as our data center in Amsterdam. This energy marketplace matches supply and demand for sustainable energy sources. Where we are not the main tenant, we aim to offset our share in the energy related emissions. We continuously work to optimise our buildings, and are therefore actively implementing the ‘Better Buildings Toolkit’ that has been developed by DTTL.

In order to track whether our CO₂ emissions decline as a result of our actions and policies, we have developed a CO₂ Emissions Dashboard for fleet and air travel. This dashboard is updated every quarter with the latest data we receive from our suppliers. The dashboard showcases CO₂ emissions per business, fiscal year and even per cost center. It is accessible to all our employees in order to provide transparency but also to stimulate our employees to change their own behaviour and choices. It also feeds into our strategic dashboard, allowing us to discuss our performance against target within our Leadership. As our CO₂ reduction target is incorporated in our Connect for Impact strategy, it is part of the criteria for flexible reward of our Executive Board. We have also developed a Carbon Forecasting Tool to forecast the effects of our policies on our CO₂ emissions. This tool has been built in Anaplan and is integrated with other planning tools of our organisation.

Deloitte NSE has compensated the CO₂ emissions from 2020/2021 for all NSE geographies by investing in a number of certified carbon avoidance and renewable energy projects from third parties. Once total CO₂ emissions for Deloitte NSE in 2021/2022 have been verified, NSE will buy credits to fully compensate these.

Results

Last year, we saw a steep decline in CO₂ emissions as a result of the pandemic. This year, CO₂ emissions continue to be well below our maximum target due not only to travel and commuting restrictions, but also because of the continued electrification of our fleet and introduction of the new travel policy. In the final months of this year, we noticed a slight increase in CO₂ emissions as travel and commuting restrictions were lifted, but it still remains well below target compared to the pre-COVID situation. This increase, however, does require more action and communication activities in the near future in order to make sure that our CO₂ emissions do not go back to or even beyond 2019 levels.

Table 03: Energy consumption, CO₂ emissions and intensity

* Our Scope 3 emissions consist of purchased goods and services, and travel related activities (such as hotel stays, rental cars, reimbursed mileage). They are to a large extent calculated by DTTL and NSE on the basis of spend. The data for FY22 was not available in time for review by our Audit & Finance Committee and hence is not part of the PDF that was reviewed.

Going forward

Our thorough insight into our CO₂ emissions and ability to forecast our CO₂ emissions through our Carbon Forecasting Model allows us to make adjustments to our policies where needed. We will therefore closely monitor our CO₂ emissions in the upcoming year, especially when COVID restrictions remain lifted as this could lead to increased business travel activities.