Environmental stewardship

As part of our multi-year transformational office upgrades across China, we work closely with our leased office landlords and our design consultants to integrate sustainability principles and considerations into our office spaces. We prioritise buildings which are certified to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard – an internationally recognised rating system for green buildings. Today, over 70% of our leased floor space is now LEED certified and/or located within LEED certified buildings.

Our new and refurbished premises in Beijing and Shanghai are equipped with upgraded digital solutions and dynamic multi-purpose spaces, to facilitate flexible working and enhanced efficiency of floor space to eliminate excessive energy consumption. We also ensure our new office spaces are designed to maximise the use of daylight, and adopt energy-saving equipment such as LED lights and more efficient multi-function devices.

Shanghai New Bund Center  PwC office 

New Bund Center is an innovative new precinct located in Shanghai's Pudong area, developed for a diverse range of uses that promote walkability, transportation efficiency and reduced traffic, at the intersection of three of Shanghai's mass rapid transit subway lines. Along with innovative smart office technology solutions, the new PwC office includes the following sustainability features: 

• Water efficiency fixtures that contribute to reducing water use by 45% compared with the LEED benchmark, which for PwC means saving nearly 9,000 cubic metres of water per year.
• Installation of high efficiency LED lighting, and optimised lighting design that reduces power consumption for lighting by a further 25% (compared to ASHRAE 90.1).
• Smart lighting systems, including daylight sensors along the perimeters and occupancy sensors covering 90% of all office lighting fixtures.
• Electricity sub-metering tracks system level energy use to assist identifying potential further energy saving opportunities.
• Reducing life-cycle waste from decommissioning the existing office and fitting out the new office, for example reusing some office furniture, reusing more than 11,000 square metres of metal ceiling plates, and recycling furniture, carpets and some fit-out materials.

Initiated by A Plastic Ocean Foundation (APOF) and sponsored by the PwC Foundation, we have been supporting ‘Project Prosperity’, a highly impactful environmental conservation project in Hong Kong in 2022.
   

Project Prosperity is the first bamboo afforestation programme in Hong Kong, taking advantage of bamboo’s phytoremediation characteristic that extracts and removes pollutants from soil. This project aims to conserve the ocean by stopping pollution through the rehabilitation of abandoned and water-adjacent farmland in Ha Pak Nai.
   

The locally grown bamboo will be manufactured into bio-based products, contributing to the development of a circular economy. This project also creates job opportunities for under-educated youth in Hong Kong by helping them develop a career in the expanding green and sustainable industries.
    

“Our sincerest thanks to PwC. PwC has been one of our major ocean recovery partners since 2019. For this year, we are grateful for the support we have received from PwC in the first bamboo afforestation project in Hong Kong. More than 400 bamboo stems were planted, including Phyllostachys Edulis Riviere, Sinobambusa tootsik (Makino) and Indocalamus longiauritus. With PwC's contribution, we are one step closer to accomplishing environmental recovery and creating 13 green employment opportunities for local youth and veteran farmers. Along with the green recovery that bamboo can play a part in, it also introduces a circular economy to the local community. We look forward to continuing our partnership with PwC, to restore our land, ocean and community.” - Willy Kwong, Director of A Plastic Ocean Foundation

45% reduction per capita despite increase in headcount and office space
  

Since FY11, PwC has seen the growth of its business progressively decouple from its energy consumption. Through improvements in our operations, we achieved 45% electricity intensity reduction in FY22 compared to 10 years ago. This trend is linked to a number of improvements in our operations, which allow us to reduce our impacts on the environment and are aligned with our commitment to measure and manage our environmental impacts.

Investing in renewable energy
  

Electricity consumption is one of the largest sources of our carbon emissions. While we continue to drive efficiency to reduce energy, we are committed to sourcing 100% renewable electricity to mitigate the emissions from electricity used in our offices.
  

In FY22, we continued to source I-REC Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) from accredited wind-power sources in China to cover all our scope 2 electricity consumption (including from air-conditioning).
   

PwC also joined RE100 in 2018, an initiative of The Climate Group and CDP (Carbon Disclosure Project) to demonstrate our commitment to renewable energy.

Server virtualisation
  

Cooling and powering data centres consumes a lot of energy, so we are constantly searching for solutions and technologies to be more efficient. Since 2015, we have been introducing server virtualisation software in our data centres, with nearly 100% of our servers now virtualised. This reduces the number of physical servers needed, and hence reduces energy consumption.

We are committed to reducing the environmental impact of our business, and our 2030 net zero commitment is underpinned by a science-based target to decrease our emissions by 50% in absolute terms from 2019 levels. This is in line with a 1.5 degree scenario to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, as set out in the Paris Agreement.
  

We also recognise the importance of actively reducing the climate impact of our own operational footprint now. That is why, as we work towards net zero in 2030, to mitigate our impacts today we continue to support high quality carbon credit projects to offset our emissions, including from owned vehicles, heat consumption, and business air travel. In FY22, PwC China supported: 
   

• Sichuan household biodigesters project in China which distributes small-scale biogas plants to low-income rural households with livestock across the Sichuan Province of China, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and improving air pollution and sanitation.
• Afforestation project in China’s Gansu Province which increases carbon sequestration and contributes to local sustainable development by planting trees on the barren lands.

Leading in corporate climate action, we participated in the Cathay Pacific Corporate Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) Programme as one of the first eight launch customers in 2022. The programme provides us the opportunity to reduce our carbon impact from business travel by contributing to the use of SAF uplifted for the first time from Hong Kong International Airport on Cathay Pacific flights.

Climate change is affecting everyone on this planet. Countries, businesses and NGOs are already finding and scaling solutions to fight climate change, but individual action is also crucial in mitigating the climate crisis.

   
To help our people understand the carbon impacts of their current lifestyle and how individuals can play a part to tackle the climate crisis, PwC launched the Personal Carbon Calculator during Green Week 2022 to promote low-carbon lifestyle changes to the whole PwC community.
       

Through this tool, our people will receive a tailored carbon footprint report after completing a simple survey, then they can choose from a number of climate pledges to start reducing their carbon footprint. For every pledge our people make, PwC is also planting shrubs on their behalf to help restore the nature reserves and control desertification in Ningxia, China, recognising the commitment of our people in reducing their carbon impact.

As a result of travel restrictions due to COVID-19, we have seen a reduction in flight travel emissions in FY22. Compared to FY19, carbon emissions from business air travel have reduced by 63%. Being one of our most significant sources of emissions, it is important for us to consider the environmental impacts of our travel choices and try to travel smarter and cleaner when air travel resumes.
   

To further support our people in choosing greener alternatives for their business travel, PwC China launched an initiative called 'Go green. Get on track.' in 2021 to encourage more of our people to choose high-speed rail as a low-carbon alternative to flying.
   

We started with the most frequent domestic travel route, Beijing – Shanghai, as the pilot. All staff regardless of their grade are eligible for 1^st class tickets when taking a high-speed train between Beijing and Shanghai and will receive additional wellness benefits for each trip.
    

The percentage of train travel on this route has more than doubled in the first year, compared to FY19. Given the popularity of the pilot initiative, we further expanded this train travel policy in 2022 to cover 15 travel routes in China, making it easier for our people to choose low-carbon travel options where schedules allow.
    

Compared to air travel, emissions from train travel are 96% lower for the same distance of travel. As the high-speed rail network in China continues to grow, we are aiming to expand this initiative to cover even more travel routes.