Standard Life Aberdeen’s 50% emission cut pledge is to include home working, the group announced in a statement.
The asset management firm has stepped up its climate change commitments to achieve a 50% reduction in emissions by 2025 as a step to achieving net zero by 2050.
It said the pandemic had caused a dramatic shift in its operational carbon footprint, as emissions from its offices and business travel reduced, while homeworking emissions soared.
Travel, which made up 65% of its footprint in 2019, accounted for just 14% of emissions in 2020. At the same time, the number of employees working from home rose from just under 1% to over 95%. As a result, home working became the largest source of emissions, making up 55% of the firm’s carbon footprint last year.
With working from home or hybrid working likely to be a permanent feature, Standard Life Aberdeen has partnered with eco-tech company Pawprint to help employees measure, monitor and reduce their carbon footprint through a set of tailored questions and challenges. The Pawprint for Business app also allows Standard Life Aberdeen to gather anonymous data to remove some of the assumptions in its current work from home emissions analysis.
Stephen Bird, chief executive of Standard Life Aberdeen, said: “ESG is not a hygiene factor and it is not a bolt-on activity, we all have a responsibility to constantly analyse our own progress and ambition. We also know that commitments need to be more than words. We need to be held [to] account on both our plans and progress – through clear and specific targets and transparent and credible reporting.
“As a business we are carbon neutral, through offsetting 110% of our operational carbon footprint and by accelerating our climate change commitments we hope to demonstrate our constructive contributions towards decarbonisation.”
