Our environmental impacts

As a firm we continually are finding ways to address our environmental impacts, drive efficiencies and reduce our carbon footprint. The last year has been unlike any other and our emissions have dropped to a record low.

In this exceptional year, our total emissions fell to a record low of 96% below the 2007 baseline for our 2022 targets.

While keeping our offices open for emergency use meant that energy consumption was similar to last year, we continued to increase the proportion of energy that was renewable - to 86%.

However the vast majority of our emissions reduction was from the near cessation of ‘scope 3’ business travel. We expect this to rise next year in line with the easing of restrictions, so we’re proactively exploring ways to limit the bounce back, as part of our aim to halve our operational footprint from a new baseline of 2019. This is in line with PwC’s global commitment to be ‘net zero by 2030’, which has been confirmed by the Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

Our low office occupancy levels this year also mean that we’ve seen a further drop in the resources that our people consume and so we continue to exceed our FY22 targets for both paper and water, as well as the amount of waste generated and recycled.