Carl Sizer and Lynne Baber video transcript

In this past year, we’ve seen the impact of climate change across the world, and how businesses are responding.

Our goal is to build trust in the climate transition by identifying and implementing strategies that create responsible change.

Lynne

Through our work with our clients and our suppliers, we are accelerating action on a fair and sustainable transition to net zero.

And not only that, we’re giving more support to our people, encouraging them to learn more about ESG and what they can do to help tackle climate change.

Carl

This was never in sharper focus than at COP26 in Glasgow last November. I was privileged to spend time at the event, and saw first hand how engaged businesses are in finding solutions to these most important problems.

This financial year, we launched our Green Jobs Barometer - an industry-first initiative that shows the scale of opportunities in the labour market, across all parts of the UK.

We also established a new Social Value Fund that supports firmwide and cross-industry activities that will deliver societal and economic benefits for our clients.

As part of this, we delivered a significant programme of transformation for Liverpool City Council that included an initiative for students from across disadvantaged areas in the city.

Lynne

Across all of our lines of service the demand for our sustainability expertise has increased, leading to more engagements where we’re really making a difference to clients’ ESG performance.

We worked with global energy technology company Baker Hughes to help them transform as they move towards a cleaner, more sustainable future.

Our team of experts helped the company meet its 2030 target of a 50% reduction in operational emissions, leading to $700 million in cost savings.

Elsewhere, we supported Aviva when the insurance firm requested a much higher level of assurance over selected ESG metrics, with a special focus on their climate change related disclosures.

This led us to audit a set of Aviva’s ESG metrics to the same level we audit the financial statements, helping the company to demonstrate the confidence they have in their ESG reporting.

Carl

Beyond our client work, we’re putting ESG at the forefront of our own agenda. Our newly launched integrated reporting hub brings to life an array of data covering our financial and non-financial performance.

We’ve also met a target to have all our UK offices powered 100% by renewable electricity generated by wind or solar.

There is so much I’m proud of but there is much more to come.

Lynne

As we go into our next financial year I’m proud to lead a new practice that combines our world-leading Sustainability & Climate Change consulting business with our ESG risk advisory business.

PwC Sustainability was created to support our ESG ‘built-in’ strategy too and we’re excited to support the changing needs of our clients on all aspects of the climate transition and wider ESG agenda.