Carbon Footprint Reporting

Climate-related risk and the complex environmental, social and economic challenges that come with it are impacting our company, clients and communities. To demonstrate our commitment to climate change mitigation and environmental stewardship, we maintained our carbon neutral status in 2023.

Net-zero operations by 2040

We have an interim target to reduce the emissions of our operations by 45% by 2030, before achieving net zero no later than 2040. These targets are for both direct emissions (Scope 1) and indirect emissions (Scopes 2 and 3), including emissions resulting from corporate offices, Financial Advisor offices, fleet vehicles and business travel. Reflecting our commitment to leadership and to ensure our carbon accounting is aligned with the realities of hybrid and virtual work modes, we also track emissions from employee commuting and working from home, and Information Technology assets and services.

Executive Compensation

To incentivize decarbonization and hold ourselves to account, we have linked our net-zero operations targets to our president and CEO’s long-term incentive plan for 2023 and will expand these targets to our vice presidents in 2024.

From carbon neutral to net zero

Currently, we’ve reduced 34% of greenhouse gas emissions from 2019 base year levels. Our focus and priority is on eliminating our emissions in alignment with our net-zero targets. In the meantime, we have maintained carbon neutrality through carbon offsets that have been verified to a recognized standard and listed on a public registry to ensure quality. We’ve also undertaken a rigorous media scan and project documentation review to make sure we’re focusing our purchases on renewable energy certificates and offset projects that have not been identified as having quality concerns. Recent offset purchases include a waste composting facility, an IT assets reuse project, and a project that treats wastewater through an innovative engineered wetland.

Emissions impacted by post-pandemic rebound

Our operational emissions were higher in 2023 than in 2022, as it was our first full year since returning to the office and more frequent travel. We also invested in IT infrastructure. We continue to broaden and deepen engagement across the enterprise on our decarbonization pathways to drive us towards our net zero commitment and have identified mindful business travel and vendor engagement as our most significant levers within our control to further drive down emissions.

*As a result of the retrospective adoption of new accounting standards, IFRS 17 and IFRS 9, on January 1, 2023, 2022 figure has been restated.
**Results for 2019 to 2022 have been restated.

For more on how we calculate our energy use and operational carbon footprint, and a breakdown of direct and indirect emissions: Operational energy consumption and carbon emission inventory.

For more on our climate-related governance, strategy and risk management, as well as metrics and targets, read our 2023 Climate Report.