Effective date: May 1, 2024
McKinsey & Company recognizes its responsibility to protect our planet and is dedicated to minimizing its impact on the environment. We strive to uphold this commitment both through our client service and through decarbonizing our own operations.
We support the Paris Agreement, UN Sustainable Development Goals, and are a party to the UN Global Compact. We strive to comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations and ask our suppliers to do the same.
As a leading global management consultancy, our biggest contribution towards achieving a net-zero world is through our service to clients. We partner with our clients to hyperscale green business, create value with decarbonization, amplify climate investment, power climate technologies, and more.
In addition to our work with clients, we are taking action to minimize the impact of our own operations on the environment. Reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions is our top priority. We recognize that the largest environmental impact of our operations comes from business travel, and thus a key focus of our efforts is on reducing and decarbonizing our travel footprint. In addition, we are actively reducing our direct emissions from offices and company owned vehicles and encourage offices to reduce waste and water usage, including recycling materials, donating used equipment, reducing single plastics use and food waste.
We are committed to reducing our GHG emissions in line with a 1.5⁰ C future and have set Science-Based Targets (vs. 2019 baseline):
- Reducing our direct emissions and those from purchased electricity and energy (Scope 1 and 2) by 25% by 2025 and 90% by 20501
- Reducing our per FTE2 emissions from business travel (Scope 3) by 35% by 2025 and 97% by 20501
We will continue to set interim targets on our path to 2050 net zero. Our GHG footprint is verified independently by a third party and published annually in our ESG report.
To deliver against our commitments, we cut, compensate, and catalyze:
- We are cutting our direct emissions and those from purchased electricity and energy (Scope 1 and 2) by:
- Purchasing 100% renewable electricity by 2025 at the latest
- Implementing high environmental standards such as LEED Gold or Platinum for new offices and major renovations
- Reducing emissions from our car fleet by increasing the share of electric / hybrid cars and by offering alternative benefits in lieu of company cars
- Working with suppliers to measure, manage, and address their GHG emissions
- We are cutting our emissions from business travel (Scope 3) emissions by:
- Encouraging employees to make more sustainable travel choices. These include, where feasible, selecting rail versus air travel, staying in hotels with sustainable practices, using electric ground transportation, hybrid work models and reducing the number of trips to and from client sites
- Working with travel providers to measure, manage, and address GHG emissions, and engaging them in decarbonization efforts
- Purchasing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to lower emissions associated with air travel
- We are compensating for our remaining Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by:
- Purchasing a diverse portfolio of carbon credits across nature-based (NBS) and technology-based solutions (TBS) certified to international standards
- Moving to 100% carbon removal credits by 2030
- Collecting an internal carbon fee on all emissions to fund the purchases of SAF and carbon credits. The current fee is set at $50 / tCO2e and will grow over time
- We aim to catalyze further growth in climate technologies and solutions by:
- Engaging in select alliances and buyers’ coalitions which seek to scale climate solutions needed for net zero (e.g., SAF demand pooling by SABA, TBR advance market commitment by Frontier, commitment to halt tropical deforestation by LEAF)
- Committing $2 billion3 to social responsibility efforts by 2030, including climate-related efforts
Our overarching goal is to act swiftly to meet the challenge of climate change. To ensure we do that as climate science progresses, we will adapt our commitments in line with latest available knowledge and research.
1 We resubmitted our 2025 near-term target to align with SBTi’s latest guidance and submitted our 2050 net zero target to the SBTi – both are pending validation
2 Full time equivalent
3 In cash and pro bono support to social responsibility efforts by 2030