BSR’s Climate Goal

Like all organizations, our day-to-day activities impact the environment. From the offices we use to our business travel and the products and services we buy, we generate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. We know that minimizing our impact and preserving the natural resources on which we depend is critical to minimize climate-related risks.

It is therefore important that we follow our own suggested best practices by measuring and minimizing our negative climate impact using the same sustainability principles we advise to our member companies.

BSR began to measure its GHG footprint in 2022 across Scopes 1, 2, and 3, in line with the GHG Protocol, and we continue to measure it annually. BSR is committed to transparency and publicly sharing its GHG footprint information, as well as information on our sustainability progress.

With the support from our expert team and partners, we aim to continually iterate on and further our sustainability efforts over the years. BSR will always opt for the most ambitious and impactful emissions reduction solutions available and feasible for our organization, and have an eye on pursuing long-term impact over short-term or one-off gains.

We hope that others will be inspired by our ambition and commitment to deliver tangible, positive impacts for the planet and society, as well as our commitment to being transparent in our work to further instill sustainability best practices into our operations and culture.

The second step is publicly reporting on our GHG footprint transparently. As a service-based organization, our main GHG hotspots are in Scope 3 (business travel and purchased products and services) and Scopes 1 and 2 (office heating and electricity). Since 2023, we have publicly reported our GHG footprint annually on our website and will continue to do so.

The third step is to set an emissions reduction target in line with climate science. BSR endorses the SBTi Net Zero Standard, and while as a non-profit we cannot officially commit to the Science Based Targets initiative, we have set for ourselves a 1.5°C-aligned net-zero target that follows SBTi guidance.

When we first announced our climate target in 2023, we had decided to use 2021 GHG footprint data as our baseline. As our GHG footprinting progressed, it became clear that 2021 was not a representative baseline year, since it did not accurately reflect BSR’s business-as-usual emissions after the COVID-19 pandemic. Hence, we have decided to update the baseline year to a more representative, more recent year—2023—and will report progress on a yearly basis from 2025 onward. More details can be found in the “Revisions in Our Baseline Year and Commitments” section.

The fourth step is implementing internal initiatives to reduce climate emissions across our operations and value chain. We will prioritize the reduction of emissions in our main GHG hotspots, including business travel, purchased products and services, and office heating and electricity.

Moreover, starting in 2025, we will apply a carbon price to our Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions and will use such amounts to invest in climate solutions that contribute to global net zero beyond our value chain. In 2025, we have decided to use a Reduced Carbon Price of US$15/mtCO2e, instead of the U.S. Government Social Cost of Carbon, as the basis for our investments to better reflect the operational realities against the backdrop of global uncertainties. More details can be found in the “Revisions in Our Baseline Year and Commitments” section.

We know our climate target is ambitious—achieving it will be a journey that we build and iterate year after year. As a small organization, BSR has limited leverage on our Scope 3 emissions, and we don’t have all the solutions now, or the resources of the large companies with which we work. However, we are committed to playing our part in achieving global net zero and leading by example. We will review our approach regularly and openly communicate on our thinking and progress.

However, we also know it is important to understand what the numbers mean in real-world actions. Simply speaking, our climate ambition explained above means:

• Our Scope 1 and 2 GHG footprint mostly comprises natural gas usage for office heating/cooling and electricity consumption across our offices in North America, Europe, and Asia. Achieving our near-term and long-term goals will require moving away from natural gas toward renewable electricity. We will evaluate what we can do right away in our leased offices, what future leverage we can apply in such offices, and/or what we can do in new office leases in the longer term. As remote working is now part of the day-to-day for much of our staff, we will also consider its impact on our GHG footprint.
• Our Scope 3 GHG footprint mostly comprises the services we buy (contractors make up over 80 percent of our Scope 3) and our business travel (mainly air travel and hotel accommodations). We have a long list of diverse contractors, ranging in size from individual, small-scale consultants (many operating in the Global South) to established businesses, and varying in geography and scope of work. We do not believe it is realistic for our 2030 target to cover all contractors, so we are focusing now on the top 20 percent by spend, where we have the closest relationships, and therefore in theory, the most influence. Achieving our Scope 3 target will require us to set clear policies on how and when we travel, and what realistic requirements we should have for our main contractors.

Amid the shift back to business-as-usual, the world also experienced heightened uncertainty from the external environment. This new environment limited BSR’s ability to achieve our 2022 commitment to use the U.S. Government Social Cost of Carbon as the carbon price applied to our Scopes 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions for investments in climate solutions that contribute to global net zero beyond our value chain. As our 2022 commitment was not reflective of the business and operational realities in the new environment, we decided to use the Reduced Carbon Price of US$15/mtCO2e instead to remain in line with our net-zero ambitions while ensuring that our commitments are realistic and feasible to implement in the coming years.

Some of these initiatives include:

• Establishing of a low-carbon travel policy
• Administering surveys with office coordinators to understand the feasibility of renewable energy purchase for all offices
• Developing green office guidelines

We will continue to explore avenues to achieve our net-zero targets through contractor engagement, renewable energy purchase, and greening our travels and offices.