Mott MacDonald

by Mott MacDonald

The Mott MacDonald Group is a consultancy headquartered in the United Kingdom. It employs 16,000 staff in 150 countries. It is one of the largest employee-owned companies in the world.

As an employee-owned company, our staff play a large part in defining the shape and strategy of our business. Long-term sustainability is high on their and our agenda. As a company, we have an obligation to act responsibly, and this includes out impact on the earth and its environment. Therefore, starting our journey to zero-carbon seemed the obvious thing to do.

But we have become carbon neutral first because it is important to us that we do the right thing, for our planet and people worldwide, and for our friends, colleagues and families.

To start with, we looked at how we could decarbonise the energy supplies to our offices. In Europe – where we produced more than 50% of our energy carbon emissions and over 60% of our transport emissions – we worked closely with our landlords, and the vast majority have now moved to renewable energy supplies.

In North America, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and South Asia we looked at both switching energy supplies and becoming more energy efficient.

We found our biggest travel-related emissions came from flying. We now signpost low carbon airlines or those offering offsetting schemes to drive down our footprint, while collaborative platforms and conferencing technology help us avoid much unnecessary travel.

In North America we noted a lot of road travel, so we promoted hybrid vehicles and are now moving towards electric. Of course, this only works if the country’s electricity grid is itself relatively low carbon, so a bespoke national approach is needed that takes this into account.

Elsewhere, such as in the UK, we worked with our providers for preferential rates on low emissions vehicles.
From the beginning, we shared details of our carbon footprint openly with our employees via a Power BI dashboard, and this has allowed them all to drill into the data and provide their own suggestions on how to cut our emissions. Crowd sourced ideas include taking a vegan-first approach to catering for meetings and events. A lot of our actions are driven by ideas from our staff.

Colleagues feel pride in working for a company that takes carbon reduction seriously and has reached this important milestone.

It’s important to us that we are consistent in what we say and do. We have a thriving business in carbon management, and it is essential that we have our house in order as the focus shifts from carbon reduction to net-zero. Clients and partners are already talking to us about our carbon neutral journey, and how they may follow suit.

There will also be benefits for those we work with, especially our clients, who need to consider carbon emissions in their supply chain. We have the certification they require when working out their own carbon accounts, helping them to drive down their overall project footprint.