EY has announced its ambition to be carbon negative (reducing more carbon than emitted) in 2021 by setting targets to significantly reduce its absolute emissions and removing and offsetting more carbon than it emits.

In a new statement on sustainability, EY set out components of its plans to not only become carbon negative but to reduce total emissions by 40 per cent – consistent with a science-based target – and achieve net zero in 2025.

This new ambition builds on the global organisation’s achievement of carbon neutrality in December 2020 and underscores the EY commitment to the environment and to driving long-term, sustainable growth.

Ronald Attard, EY Malta country managing partner and Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe & Central Asia (CESA) strategy and transactions leader, said: “Sustainability has been high on our agenda for the past few years and we understand that the global challenges we face require bold action to be taken today for a better tomorrow. To combat climate change, we are undertaking major steps that go beyond our successful 2020 carbon-neutral plan and that is to become carbon negative this year and net zero in 2025.”

Some of the key elements of the ambition include reducing business travel emissions by 35 per cent by FY25 against a FY19 baseline; reducing overall office electricity usage and procuring 100 per cent renewable energy for remaining EY needs; earning membership to the RE100 – a group of influential organisations committed to renewable power by FY25; providing EY teams with tools that enable them to calculate, then work to reduce, the amount of carbon emitted when carrying out EY client work; and using nature-based solutions and carbon-reduction technologies to remove from the atmosphere or offset more carbon than EY emits, every year.

Alongside the work it is undertaking to become more sustainable, EY teams are developing a new set of global sustainability solutions for EY clients aimed at helping them on their own sustainability journeys.