Decarbonisation

To fulfil our climate change commitments, we are actively developing solutions to reduce our energy consumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with our operations and activities.

We work together with our partners to reduce our environmental impact and improve our performance

To achieve our GHG emission reduction and decarbonisation targets, our action plan includes:

• Implementing a decarbonisation road map for our fleet and fixed assets, which produce the majority of our GHG emissions and where we can make the most difference to reducing emissions.
• Establishing a new position in our New Zealand business focused solely on our sustainability. Our National Sustainability Manager will have oversight and co- ordination responsibility to drive our success across our business.
• Ensuring we have the right resources to progress our environmental sustainability strategy and actions, e.g. we are currently recruiting an energy emissions graduate to increase our resources to assist with our decarbonisation journey.
• Fostering enduring partnerships with Energy Efficiency & Conservation Authority (EECA). Our partnership with EECA to date has enabled us to develop an energy transition accelerator (ETA) to unlock further opportunities to decarbonisation our business/operations.
• Importantly, Downer has engaged in sustainability linked loans (SLL) where the interest rate of the loan is tied to sustainability performance targets and our sustainability key performance indicators e.g. our scope 1 and 2 GHG reduction targets. 
• We also engage our key supply chain partners in our environmental sustainability reporting. This is a significant undertaking and addresses the impact that our supply chain has on our decarbonisation goals. In FY19 approximately 23% of our scope 1 emissions were estimated for subcontractor emissions. Including our supply chain/subcontractors in our sustainability journey is therefore key to success. Our subcontract agreements now require our supply chain/subcontractor partners to undertake sustainable reporting (e.g. fuel consumption, waste). We are using roadshows to share our knowledge with our supply chain/subcontractor partners, so that they are able to contribute to carbon reduction targets.