Sustainability

Environment

3i has fewer than 240 employees worldwide and has a relatively low environmental impact.

We operate from a network of seven offices across the world, with c.65% of our employees based in our London office. All our offices are leased. We have an Environmental Management System that is proportionate to the operational scale and environmental risk profile of our business. We use the precautionary principle to manage environmental risk for our business and our portfolio proactively.

Our strategy is to:

  • meet the requirements of applicable environmental legislation;
  • minimise waste and maximise recycling;
  • work with our landlords to ensure the energy efficiency of our offices;
  • include environmental considerations in our procurement processes;
  • measure our carbon footprint annually, and publish the results in our Annual and Sustainability reports and on our website; and
  • report to two external publicly disclosed benchmarking indices and use our performance in these benchmarking indices to assess and improve future performance; we choose the CDP and the S&P Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

During the year to 31 March 2021, our measured Scope 1, 2 (location-based) and 3 emissions totalled 2,926 tCO2e. This comprised:

Scope
 FY2021 FY20201

 

 UK Rest of world Total UK Rest of World Total

1

10.4

13.3

117.7

 122.6 28.0 150.5

2 - location-based 

 126.0

133.3

259.3

 327.8 125.4 453.2

2 - market-based

-

 142.4  142.4 - 129.3 129.3

Scope 3

 n/a n/a 2,666.2 n/a n/a 5,916.9

Total Scope 1, 2 (location-based) & 3

 n/a n/a 3,043.2 n/a n/a 6,520.7

Total Scope 1, 2 (market-based) & 3

 n/a n/a 2,926.3 n/a n/a 6,196.8
1. Some emissions have been updated compared to the disclosures in our Annual report 2020, where estimated data has been replaced by reported data.

This is equivalent to 12.8 tCO2e per full time equivalent employee, based on an average of 229 employees (2020: 25.6 tCO2e; 242 employees). Overall, our Scope 1, 2 (market-based) and 3 emissions decreased by 61%, driven principally by a reduction in business travel due to Covid-19 travel restrictions.

This year, in light of the exceptional circumstances we experienced, we chose to include emissions related to home working in our Scope 3 calculation. These were calculated by estimating the energy consumed by employees on using office equipment, lighting, and heating while working from home, using national benchmarks where available.

During the year to 31 March 2021, our total fuel and electricity consumption totalled 1,446 MWh, of which 77% was consumed in the UK. The split between fuel and electricity consumption is displayed below.
FY2021 FY2020
Energy Consumption (MWH)
 UK Rest of world Total UK Rest of World Total
Electricity 540.3 278.3 818.6 1,282.5 310.5 1,593.0
Fuels1 567.7 60.1 627.8 666.6 139.3 805.9

1. Natural gas and transportation fuels (petrol and diesel).


Total energy consumption fell by 40% year-on-year, driven by the partial closure of our offices due to Covid-19.

Our emissions have been verified to a reasonable level of assurance by Carbon Intelligence according to the ISO 14064-3 standard.

Latest Sustainability report

GHG emissions verification statement

Our GHG emissions disclosures have been verified to a reasonable level of assurance by Carbon Credentials, according to the ISO 14064-3 standard

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