Our focus on sustainability and climate
At Deloitte, our aim is to help orchestrate systemic change to achieve a tangible impact on climate, nature and society. We lead clients, partners and coalitions of the willing to deliver ambitious transformative change at speed.
This work starts from within, and our WorldClimate transformation is driving responsible climate choices in our organisation. Read more about our internal initiatives here.
Collaborating with our clients, we’re helping them to understand and respond to new regulations and reporting, such as the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. These regulations demand transformative change, beyond compliance. We are working with our clients to shape greener supply chains, design circularity into the way they work, and accelerate the energy transition.
For instance, we’re working with Cargill to make cocoa supply chains more transparent and sustainable.
Our work with the International Olympic Committee contributed to a more sustainable Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
And we are also working with the UK Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to help the UK’s journey to net-zero.
We’re helping our clients to set the initial strategy, shaping, designing, and implementing the transformation required, and assuring and auditing the delivery. We are also actively involved in several coalitions of the willing, tackling some of the most complex challenges the world faces.
We are helping to promote circularity by working alongside Circle Economy, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) and the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. We are also helping to develop sustainable food systems, as seen in our work with Sustell to help further sustainable animal protein production.
“We’re proud of how far we’ve come – but we need to look to the future,” says Smruti Naik-Jones, Chief Sustainability Officer, Deloitte NSE.
“Working together as one global team, we’re able to bring the full range of our services to our clients as well as global partners such as the UN and World Economic Forum. This has led to market analysts, Vendantix, recognising Deloitte as the professional services firm with most momentum in the ESG and sustainability services space.”
Looking ahead, we’ll continue to shift our focus from compensation for past emissions to understanding how we can actively contribute to societal decarbonisation. This means using our reach and capabilities, skills and financial investments, to protect and restore nature, amplify solutions that tackle emissions and boost innovation whilst staying aligned with the science as it evolves.
Smruti Naik-Jones, Chief Sustainability Officer, Deloitte NSE
Advancing societal net-zero through Beyond Value Chain Mitigation
We have a greater chance of limiting temperature increases to 1.5°C by working together to decarbonise society and the economy.
That’s why our response to the climate emergency goes beyond our own operations as Deloitte.
Over the past two years, we have transitioned to a forward-looking approach to help accelerate societal decarbonisation. Through this new approach, we contribute investment equivalent to our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions to help reduce and remove emissions beyond our value chain. This means we provide pro bono support and finance (through a combination of direct funding and carbon credits) to a diverse portfolio of high-impact climate solutions and projects to help achieve societal net-zero.
In FY24, we evaluated projects with high carbon mitigation potential and allocated £5.4m to six transformational projects, including the development of carbon negative materials for the construction sector, the creation of a seagrass carbon code in the UK, scaling and improving a tool enabling caterers to offer healthier, sustainability-focused menus, and scaling a circular organic waste solution. We focus on innovative projects with the potential to deliver scalable, transformational climate solutions to society where our skills and influence, in addition to targeted investment, can catalyse environmental and social impact across the key areas of the energy transition, circularity, sustainable food systems and nature restoration.
This year, we invested £2m in carbon credits to align with Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi) guidance, to purchase credits representative of at least 50% of FY24 unabated emissions.
Through our relationship with The Earthshot Prize, we’ve been privileged to partner with finalists on innovations with great potential to help solve the planet’s most pressing problems. In FY24, we provided pro bono support and mentorship to finalists, at a market value of £800k, and we look forward to continuing to invest while on our journey to net-zero.
