Environmental Impact - By the numbers

Our ongoing dedication to preserving and improving the environment around us

Continuous progress takes dedication and intentional action. It takes discovery and acknowledgment, strong thought leadership, the sharing of knowledge, and the desire and know-how to be and do better. We’ve analyzed our business and identified both near-term opportunities and thoughtful, long-term strategies around environmental sustainability, with the goal of creating positive changes for our people, clients, communities and planet.

Our environmental strategy includes:

Reducing and monitoring our greenhouse gas emissions
Infusing environmental stewardship into our culture
Integrating environmental sustainability into our everyday business operations
Collaborating with strategic ecosystems

Reducing and monitoring our emissions

Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions is a vital part of our strategy. To take that one step further, we’ve created targets to help guide our focus and sustain momentum on specific areas that have a significant impact on our overall emissions.

Our current targets in the U.S. include achieving the following by 2030:

Reducing emissions from natural gas energy by 50% from 2022 base year
Reducing air travel emissions by 50% per full-time equivalent (FTE)* from 2019
Reducing our square footage by one-third per FTE from 2019
Sourcing 100% renewable electricity

*For purposes of tracking against our targets, FTE is defined as the average full-time equivalents in the U.S. during the calendar year.

RSM is committed to transparently and accurately reporting our carbon emissions. With support from our ESG advisory practice, we collected data for our U.S. operations to report on our Scope 1, 2 and select Scope 3 (specifically, business travel) greenhouse gas emissions, and developed an emissions inventory using guidance from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol standards. We will work to expand data collection efforts across our full geographic focus in the coming years. Tying the below Scope 1 emissions data to our target of halving natural gas emissions by 2030, we observe encouraging progress, evidenced by a notable decline from 2022 to 2023.

RSM’s carbon footprint

Jan. 1, 2022–Dec. 31, 2022

Jan. 1, 2023–Dec. 31, 2023

TOTAL gross greenhouse gas emissions (MTCO2e)

32,079.45*

30,664.14

Scope 1

1,168.91

943.30

Natural gas utility

1,168.91

943.30

Scope 2

11,189.45

10,756.02

Electricity utility

Steam utility

10,968.91

220.53

10,517.56

238.46

Scope 3

19,721.09

18,964.83

Air travel

Non-air travel

Accommodations

11,650.58

3,664.16

4,406.35

10,350.99

3,999.51

4,614.33

*Calendar year (CY) 2022 Scope 1 and 2 data have been retroactively updated to reflect RSM’s energy usage more accurately in 2022 due to data received from office landlords after the publishing of last year’s report. In addition, to maintain comparability, CY 2022 Scope 3 emissions were updated, accounting for changes in calculation methodology.

This inventory only includes RSM US LLP offices located in the U.S.
MTCO2e stands for metric tons of CO2 equivalent.
Additional information on calculation methodology and boundaries can be found here.

Reducing air travel emissions by 50% per FTE from 2019

As of Dec. 31, 2023, we’ve achieved an inspiring 50.09% reduction in air travel emissions per FTE since 2019. While we have surpassed our target, we're focused on long-term change and will work toward continued sustainable reductions at this level.

50.09% reduction

Reducing our square footage by one-third per FTE from 2019

RSM supports flexibility now more than ever, and our real estate team has been focused on adapting to our people’s changing office space needs. We’ve made solid progress toward our target by achieving a 20.27% reduction in square footage per FTE since 2019.