Global Sustainability
Report 2022
Executive Summary
by Duncan Price
Partner | Global Sustainability Climate Change Lead at Buro Happold
In previous years, we have set ambitious sustainability goals for our practice, covering both our operations and our projects.
This year, we are pleased to present the progress we have made alongside some of the challenges we have faced, as well as the approaches we are bringing to find solutions alongside our clients, collaborators and the wider industry.
Key achievements include:
We have delivered over £30m of sustainability, environment and climate change consultancy work across our global team. This involved a wide range of experts and integrators covering themes that are relevant to our clients, including environmental, social and governance (ESG), net zero carbon, climate resilience, circular economy, biodiversity and nature-based solutions and health, wellbeing and social value. We have committed investment of £1.4m in initiatives to accelerate our work in these areas through thought leadership, service development, tool development and dissemination of knowledge across all areas of the practice.
We delivered ESG consulting and decarbonisation advice to clients covering real assets and developments worth over £250bn. We have reduced our own Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions by 19% against a 2020 baseline, while also increasing the scope of our accounting and setting a long-term decarbonisation goal to achieve net zero by 2045. This is in line with the new Science Based Targets Net Zero Carbon Standard.
Beyond the focus on our own emissions, we have provided climate change advice for over 45 C40 Cities over the last five years. This has included work on clean construction, the cost of fossil gas, European energy transition, the multiple benefits of deep retrofit, inclusive climate action and consideration of air quality, health and the benefits of urban climate action.
We introduced a new project tracking system that has so far collected qualitative data from 430 projects at concept design stage and 296 projects at scheme design stage (since 2019). For these projects, 71% of project teams reported that the client’s ambitions aligned with the principles and targets set out in our Global Sustainability Report. This includes net zero in operation by 2030 and 50% reduction in embodied carbon by 2030 for our design projects.
We delivered ESG consulting and decarbonisation advice to clients covering real assets and developments worth over £250bn.
What are our key challenges and how are we going to face them?
We are prioritising plans to decarbonise our offices in line with our commitments, while we re-evaluate where and how we operate as part of our future of work programme. We will continue to maintain reductions in our Scope 3 business travel emissions compared with a pre-pandemic baseline, as we recover from the pandemic and re-connect with clients, colleagues and collaborators. Leveraging relationships with our clients will have strategic influence on their direction and ambition before project briefs are formed and budgets set.
We will maintain an international leadership position on sustainability while acknowledging that we work in countries around the world that have decarbonisation policies and plans that move at different speeds. Developing breakthrough strategies for areas that are harder to decarbonise (such as achieving zero carbon concrete) will be an area of focus.
We shall continue to work towards our 2030 goals through a change programme that cuts right across the practice, including collecting verifiable, quantitative performance data to measure the impact of our projects with consistency and accuracy.
