Environmental Responsibility
Climate change is threatening our ability to achieve our mission—to improve the quality of life and economic well-being of people worldwide. It causes operational and programmatic disruptions and can limit the effectiveness of our work and lessen our impact if we don’t build our solutions with climate as a consideration.
Clients are rapidly expanding their outlooks and requirements, asking their contractors and suppliers, how are you contributing to slowing climate change?
Abt’s First Climate Office
Abt has been reducing our carbon footprint for over a decade. And in July 2022 we formally established our first Climate Office with the charge of catalyzing, incubating, and accelerating climate-readiness across Abt. This and the appointment of Abt’s first Chief Climate Officer, Eric Reading, are significant milestones. They represent a whole-of-Abt approach to addressing the climate crisis. We apply ambitious climate solutions to our internal operations, just as we do for our clients in our work globally.
The Climate Office has already achieved important operational wins in its short tenure. The office:
- Implemented sustainability risk language into the Employee Code of Conduct
- Refreshed our Environmental Policy for global use
- Helped us to become the first professional services company to achieve NSF/ANSI 391.1 General Sustainability Assessment Criteria for Professional Services certification
- Completed verification of near-term and 2050 net-zero GHG reduction targets with the Science Based Targets initiative.
Emissions Targets
In June 2022, we set and verified Abt’s science-based target to reduce our global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions 38.6 percent by 2027 from our 2019 base year.
Abt Global commits to reduce absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions 38.6 percent by 2027 from a 2019 base year. Abt Global also commits to reduce absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions from fuel and energy related activities, business travel, and employee commuting 38.6 percent within the same timeframe.
Abt is already below our 2027 emissions target because of pandemic-level interventions and changes to the business environment since 2020. This is also a result of intentional strategies, such as reducing our U.S. and U.K corporate office footprints in favor of co-working sites and remote or hybrid staff schedules. Abt’s short-term strategy is to ensure that “new normal” post-pandemic emissions stay below these current levels and don’t rise. As of 2022, Abt has reduced our global emissions 41.9 percent from our 2019 base year.
Air Travel Emissions Budget
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Abt’s air travel emission dropped 73 percent. But in 2022 we started to see an increase in air travel globally. We know that we need to manage our operations carefully to keep us on track to achieve our 2027 target.
To do so, Abt implemented an annual air travel emissions budget to manage this emissions source. We developed a suite of tools to enable the adoption of proactive air travel management with decision-makers, including interactive dashboards, scenario planning, and more. Over the next year, we will be integrating air travel emissions planning with financial planning while developing decision-support matrices to ease adoption and promote progress toward our goal.
MISSION IMPACT REPORT 2023: Explore
OUR WORK: Overview | Good Health | Economic Security | Effective Governance | Equity & Inclusion | Thriving Environment
OUR PEOPLE AND OPERATIONS: Overview | Employee Wellness | Financial Health | Ethics & Governance | Equity as Our Cornerstone | Environmental Responsibility
OUR COMMUNITIES: Overview
