Environment
While the climate crisis has emerged as one of the defining challenges of our time, there are many reasons for optimism. More and more, governments and companies are stepping up to take strong climate action, even in the face of economic headwinds.
Deloitte is helping to lead the way toward a more sustainable future by taking meaningful, measurable action to embed sustainability into our processes through our WorldClimate strategy.
We’re enhancing our decarbonization efforts with the aim of meeting near-term and long-term net-zero goals through the introduction of internal carbon pricing (ICP), and by supporting high-integrity market solutions. In October 2023, we joined the Government of Canada’s Net-Zero Challenge to demonstrate our commitment to building better futures.
Beyond making progress internally, we’re addressing climate change by advising clients on their sustainability journeys, working to balance their environmental and societal impacts in line with their business strategies.
WorldClimate
As part of Deloitte’s WorldClimate ambition, we invest in climate solutions that bring together allies across the ecosystem to make an impact. The following are a sampling of our endeavours.
Reducing our carbon footprint
Deloitte is committed to reaching net-zero emissions in accordance with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) Net-Zero Standard. Both our near-term and net-zero (2040) goals have been validated by SBTi.
In FY2024, we reviewed our scopes for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and identified employee commuting and teleworking as an added material source of these. As such, we adopted a methodology to calculate and report on the added emissions (e.g., from transportation between home and work sites, plus optional emissions from teleworking). The results were that employee commuting and teleworking contributed an extra 11% to our gross GHG emissions.
See the latest “Deloitte Global Impact report” for more detailed environmental performance data, along with reporting methodology and frameworks.
Progress towards our targets
Managing our carbon portfolio
Evolving our carbon management strategy via meaningful climate solutions
Catalyzing climate action at a systems level
Strengthening Indigenous voices in climate action
Our Bringing carbon down to earth report resulted from our work with Indigenous leaders and voices explores how to make use of carbon projects to advance Indigenous-led climate action initiatives. From this, we identified meaningful actions that corporate Canada, our governments, and NGOs can take to engage in authentic climate action and reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples.
Promoting sustainable agriculture practices across Canada
Recognizing the urgent need to achieve a healthy, affordable, and sustainable food system, we teamed with the Canadian Alliance for Net-Zero Agriculture (CANZA) to create an open-source framework designed to support Canada in its transition toward a net-zero food supply. The initiative brought together key players across the food production industry, including input providers, growers, producers, processors, and retailers.
This new framework addresses the critical need for standardized GHG accounting in climate-smart agricultural practices. By providing considerations for sustainable product labelling and certifications, it aims to drive the commercialization of sustainable food products in Canada. This initiative is particularly significant given the agri-food industry contributes 8% of Canada’s total GHG emissions, a figure that could rise by more than one-quarter by 2050 without intervention.
The framework offers a standardized approach to measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), enabling value-chain participants to credibly quantify their emissions reductions. Moreover, it not only helps estimate the impact of climate-smart interventions, but also measures the emissions impacts of supply chains, driving sustainable action throughout Canada’s agriculture and food value chains.
In addition, a stand-alone measurement methodology is under development to outline technical GHG accounting practices for emissions reductions and removals for key commodities.
In one of our ventures, working closely with a Canadian agri-business has already demonstrated how the framework can be applied in real-world settings to achieve tangible benefits and support value creation.
See our report Growing a net-zero food system to learn more.
Deloitte Sustainability
We’re dedicated to ensuring Canadian organizations meet their sustainability ambitions. That’s why we support our clients in aligning their sustainability efforts with their business strategies, working to help them understand related uncertainties, evaluate trade-offs, and make decisions that can enable long-term business resilience and growth. Together, we help foster a sustainable economy that balances environmental stewardship with economic prosperity and equity, working to ensure a brighter future for generations to come.
Sheri Penner
