Governance
Disclose the organisation's governance around climate-related risks and opportunities
Leadership
- Board to have strategic responsibility for climate risk and ESG matters, to be implemented through the executive function.
- Set up structures to enable board to have capacity and competence on climate-related risks and opportunities.
- Climate-related risks are listed on the risk register and subject to wider risk management and audit procedures.
- Board consideration of impact of climate change claims on the global business.
- Board focus on impact of climate-related risk on client businesses and development of expertise in new areas to aid in developing solutions to control and mitigate climate related risk and develop climate-related opportunities.
- Consideration given to how climate strategy will be prioritised and achieved in practice, in an integrated way, working across functions, disciplines and geographies.
Implementation
- Plan know-how distribution and reporting across functions, disciplines and geographies within the consultant’s group in respect of client work and key trends in climate-risk related risks and opportunities.
- Invest in competence and capacity within the consultant’s multi-disciplinary leadership teams to ensure effective leadership and responsibility for enterprise, sustainability & innovation, to drive the strategy around providing advice to clients and to build expertise and capacity to advise effectively across functions, disciplines and geographies.
Risk
- Develop a governance system to manage climate-related risks and to ensure clear consideration of physical, transition and liability risks across all elements of the consultant's business and portfolio.
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Strategy
Disclose the actual and potential impacts of climate-related risks and opportunities on the organisation’s businesses, strategy and financial planning where such information is material
Leadership
- Take a lead role and contribute intellectual capital to coalitions of clients and industry stakeholders to support delivery of the UK government’s pledge to have net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
- Invest in building additional expertise in order to support clients to transition to net-zero by supporting clients in (as appropriate):
- transition planning, identifying risks and opportunities associated with climate-related risks;
- developing realistic organisational, institutional and regulatory frameworks for net zero;
- working with supply chains effectively;
- advising on new legal, commercial, technical and business issues;
- assisting with financial planning and financing.
Implementation
- Implement short-term activities including:
- reducing own carbon emissions;
- increasing activity advising clients in transitioning to or building renewable energy supply; and
- advising clients on issues in connection with the advancement of new materials, reducing embodied carbon of assets and implementation of digital strategy to support lower carbon performance.
- Identify plan for achieving medium-term activities including (as appropriate):
- supporting the growth of the circular economy in key markets;
- building financial resilience within the business to cope with the increasing transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy;
- developing advisory in new technologies including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage as well as green materials and methodologies;
- increased digital technologies (including BIM and digital twins).
- Actively manage own carbon emissions through planning over the short, medium and long-term including:
- access to improved carbon consumption data;
- switch to renewable energy supplies;
- reduction in business travel;
- switching hired vehicles to a hybrid electric fleet;
- accreditation to PAS 2060, the international standard for carbon neutrality.
- Procure services and goods that are environmentally, socially and economically responsible, and sustainable.
- Provide project case studies for clients based on successful advisory mandates where carbon has reduced.
- Invest in projects which neutralise current GHG emissions.
- Encourage landlords to improve the environmental performance of the buildings the consultant occupies.
- Raise awareness and understanding of environmental issues with employees, clients, and suppliers.
- Ensure that meetings and events are held in a sustainable manner.
- Undergo assurance for data and disclosures across sustainability programme, enhancing the integrity, quality and usefulness of the information provided.
- Ongoing education of global professional teams on their environmental impact and how to improve professional and personal sustainability, at home and in the workplace.
- Ongoing engagement and interaction (through research, investment, education, support and activities) for global manufacturing and logistics teams on best practice methodologies and performance measurement for improving efficiencies and lowering emissions within end to end processes.
Risk
- Quantify the short, medium and long-term priorities, plans and activities identified to reduce the impact of climate-related risks and leverage the opportunity for climate-related opportunities and consider how they will impact the businesses, strategy, and financial planning.
- Implement firmwide training programme on climate-related risks including nature-based risks.
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Risk management
Disclose how the organisation identifies, assesses and manages climate-related risks
Leadership
- Work with industry to collectively plan for the response to climate-related risks.
- Invest in capability to advise clients on mitigation and management of climate-related risks in key geographies and markets.
Implementation
- Identify risks through a number of different forums such as risk workshops, risk champion forums and engagement with senior leaders and other stakeholders.
- Develop a supplier company-wide integrated enterprise risk management (ERM) process for managing climate-related risks, combining a bottom-up operational review with a top-down strategic review and external perspectives to ensure comprehensive risk identification.
- Consider what kind of current clients and projects will not be relevant or cannot be advised on in the future as a result of climate-related risks.
- Consider what new capability and market expertise will be required in the future as a result of climate-related risks and identify a plan to close any gaps in capacity and skills.
Risk
- Commission a robust and holistic third-party assessment of potential climate-related risks and opportunities and estimate the likely impact of the risks on the organisation's strategy and financial planning. This assessment should be broad and include internal stakeholder consultation, literature review, peer comparison and scenario analysis.
- Categorise risks into potential and current risk and identify controls and mitigation.
- Identify and assess climate-related physical risks across the organisation’s key operating locations and affecting key clients and markets for advisory work.
- Recognise the organisation's exposure to various risks arising out of natural disasters (for example hurricanes) as they could disrupt public and private infrastructure, including communications and financial services, which could disrupt normal business operations/increase prices.
- Recognise the organisation's exposure to the impact of climate-related risks on clients’ businesses and markets and the need to change and adapt to meet the ongoing needs of clients and the needs of emerging new clients in relation to climate-related risks.
- Consider impact on the business if access to underwriting markets for certain lines of PI coverage becomes unavailable or difficult due to the impact of climate change on the claim’s environment, thereby having a negative impact on their clients’ access to coverage, and consider potential financial impact on consultant’s business.
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Metrics & targets
Disclose the metrics and targets used to assess and manage relevant climate-related risks and opportunities where such information is material
Leadership
- Measure and report on Scope 1, 2 and 3 GHG emissions and the related risks.
- Commit to reducing GHG emissions to net zero by 2050 and develop and publish quantified targets to reduce GHG emissions in relative or absolute terms (Scopes 1, 2 and/or 3) and report on performance against these.
- Develop and publish quantified targets to reduce GHG emissions in relative or absolute terms (Scopes 1, 2 and/or 3) (including a commitment to reduce GHG emissions to net zero by 2050) and measure performance against these.
- Identify the key metrics relevant to the consultant’s business impacting climate-related risks and opportunities.
- Align with the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard to report on emissions from all the consultant’s operations and use the most recent conversion factors from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
- Measure ESG progress against industry ESG performance benchmarks e.g., Sustainalytics, DJSI, CDP, MSCI, ISS and EcoVadis.
Implementation
- Obtain independent verification of the calculation of 2021 GHG emissions assertion, in accordance with industry recognised standard ISO 14064-3.
- Engage with external Scope 3 reporting experts to support the development of a reporting methodology and to establish a Scope 3 baseline and collect Scope 3 emissions related data across all of the Consultant’s operations.
- Focus on obtaining broad data from a wide variety of sources impacting the business including capital investment data, green capex forecasts, EU taxonomy KPIs, greenhouse gas emissions, climate change science data, costs of exceptional physical events, network reliability, climate transition pathways and customer feedback.
- Implement measurement methodologies in line with best industry guidance relevant to a consultancy business.
- Publish targets for managing climate-related risks and opportunities and performance against targets with employees and clients.
Risk
- Identify and publish metrics to include climate-related risks and opportunities associated with consultant’s operations including energy, land use, water and waste management.
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