Planet - KPMG Germany

In the Planet section, we provide an overview of our measures to reduce our environmental impact through environmental activities.

In this chapter, we discuss our actions in the action area Planet

Chart (in German only)

In order to make our contribution to maintaining a world worth living in for future generations, we work continuously to reduce our environmental impact in our own business activities and in our supply chain. Our ESG services also help our clients sustainably align their business models, products and services. This is how we work together to address climate change and help our customers reduce their emissions.

Together with the other member companies of the global KPMG organisation, we have joined the Science-Based-Target initiative (SBTi) and have committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030.¹ The SBTi is committed to making scientifically sound targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions a business practice standard.

KPMG in Germany has also committed to halving greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. For this purpose, we have set up a national environmental programme with Environment 2030. It includes concrete measures in the areas of mobility, sustainable supplier management, energy and resource consumption as well as commuting. In this way we want to play our part in achieving the 1.5-degree target and fulfil our responsibility for environmental and climate protection.

¹Absolute emission reduction for Scope 1, 2 and 3; base year 2019.

Our ISO 14001-certified environmental management system forms the framework for the implementation of all our activities and measures to reduce our environmental impact in the Planet action area. It enables us to continuously question and improve our business processes with regard to their environmental impact.

Environment 2030 Programme

With our Environment 2030 programme, we are focusing on measures in the four areas of mobility (business trips), sustainable supplier management, energy & resource consumption and commuting. In the 2022 financial year, we were able to implement the first of these measures: Among other things, we have introduced an internal CO₂ price that increases the price of environmentally harmful activities when providing our services. We were also able to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 32 percent compared to the base year of 2019. This means we are on track to cut our emissions by a half by 2030.

Internal CO2 price

In the 2023 financial year, we are starting to reflect our CO₂ emissions in our management reporting and have started charging a CO₂ price. This takes into account the emissions from business trips and the energy consumption of our office buildings. KPMG in Germany starts with a price of EUR 50 per tonne.

Ralph Schatten

Head of Finance at KPMG in Germany

As an auditing and advisory firm, business trips are part of our business model. Direct contact and personal exchanges with our customers are of great importance to us. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a significant decline in our business travel over the past two years. Nevertheless, business trips increased again in the 2022 financial year due to the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions. Currently, business trips account for 13 percent of our total emissions. With awareness and motivation to use environmentally friendly alternatives, we want to change our employees’ travel habits in the long term. We do not prohibit travel, but instead create incentives for ecological business trip planning and implementation. This is achieved with the following measures:

Internal CO₂ price
CO₂ dashboard
Virtual meetings instead of business trips
CO₂-neutral rail travel

More details on Mobility can be found here.

At 67 percent, purchased goods and services make up a significant portion of our emissions, in addition to the business trips of our employees. In order to reduce our environmental impact in the supply chain sector, we make our purchasing decisions with special consideration for environmental aspects. We also hold our suppliers to the same standards. We want at least half of our strategic suppliers to set themselves a science-based target by 2030.

As part of this new objective and the specifications of the Science-Based Targets initiative, we record all relevant upstream emissions in our supply chain. An independent economic research institute is currently evaluating and recording these Scope 3 emissions with respect to their cause. In the future, this reporting will take place using KPMG’s own data sources.

For more information on sustainable supply chains, click here.

Currently, 13 percent of our emissions are due to the consumption of energy. And although we only rent the office space in all of our buildings and our influence is therefore limited, we want to implement effective measures to continuously reduce our energy consumption.

In addition, the current geopolitical changes and the associated consequences also oblige us as a company to save energy. In order to avoid a crisis, the Federal Network Agency is calling for energy savings of around 20 percent in Germany in the winter of 2022/23. We are taking on this responsibility and have taken specific measures to this end. These include closing areas that are not required at our locations, lowering the target temperatures in the offices, lowering the temperature on weekends and switching off the logos, facade lighting, televisions and other unnecessary electrical devices in the buildings.

In addition, we were able to implement further measures in the past few years and in the 2022 financial year to make everyday office life environmentally friendly. These include, but are not limited to:

Green electricity at all our sites
Energy-efficient buildings
Environmental aspects in our World of Work 2025 branches
Reusable packaging
Recycling paper
Organic and Rainforest Alliance coffee
Tree donations
Relocation of honey bee colonies

You can find more details on energy and resource consumption here.

Emissions are caused not only by business trips to clients, but also by our employees’ trips to and from the office. The journeys between employees’ homes and the workplace are currently responsible for 7 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. In this regard, we want to motivate our employees to commute in a more environmentally friendly way. To increase the motivation to do this, we focus primarily on measures like incentivisation. These include:

Piloting a mobility concept scheme at the Berlin site
Piloting an app for environmental and climate protection in connection with health and movement
Charging infrastructure for electric and hybrid cars

You can find more information about commuting here.

Thomas Löhmer

Partner, Central Services, Head of Our Impact Plan Germany

KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft

Our progress in the 2022 financial year:

As part of our sustainability goals and the requirements of the Science-Based Targets initiative, we have been determining our CO₂ footprint since 2021, taking all Scope 3 indicators into account. From the base year 2019, all relevant upstream emissions are included in Scope 3. This also applies to the greenhouse gas emissions of our supply chain and the commuting behaviour of our employees.

KPMG in Germany reports the relevant emissions data annually to KPMG International. All information flows into the reporting of the global KPMG organization to the Science-Based Targets initiative. Together with KPMG International, we continue to report annually to the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) on our KPMG-wide environmental performance and our management of climate-related risks.

After a COVID-19-related decline in recent years, we again saw a slight increase in our greenhouse gas emissions in the 2022/2023 financial year. The following overview shows our progress, but also the challenges in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

A detailed list of our greenhouse gas emissions can be found in the key performance indicator appendix.