Environmental sustainability

Secondary school students with wind turbine

What environmental sustainability means to us

We want the UK to have the engineers needed to design and build an environmentally sustainable society. Through our environmental sustainability strategy, we will inspire more, and more diverse, young people into engineering roles that address environmental sustainability. We will also play our part measuring and reducing our environmental impact.

This work has 3 objectives

Grow our understanding of how to inspire young people into engineering to meet the workforce needs for environmental sustainability

Inform and inspire young people so that more choose to make a positive impact on the environment through engineering and technology careers

Operate in an environmentally sustainable way, in our programme delivery and office (reducing resources used, energy, pollution and waste)

Growing our understanding

We have analysed current projections for green jobs and associated skills demand, publishing our findings and recommendations for government in the net zero workforce report. The Net zero workforce report looks at available evidence and research on skills gaps and demand for engineers. It covers sectors such as carbon capture, wind power, retrofitting and more.

Read the report

Informing and inspiring young people

We know that young people are interested in climate change. The Science Education Tracker 2023 shows that two thirds of students in years 7 to 13 were interested in issues related to climate change.

Through our programmes, we highlight the positive impact that engineering can have on the environment. Our activities for schools showcase a broad range of green jobs. We encourage young people to consider how a career in engineering can align with their interest in a sustainable future.

Read the Science Education Tracker

Operating in an environmentally sustainable way

Our carbon management plan shows that most of our carbon emissions are associated with our activities for schools. Therefore, our focus is to manage and reduce these.

Our carbon footprint

We use the GHG Protocol to assess and report its carbon emissions. In our last reporting period in 2022/23, the carbon footprint of EngineeringUK was 391 tCO2e. This represented a 61% reduction from our baseline of 1,000 tCO2e in 2018/19.

Net zero targets

We have committed to the following carbon reduction targets which meet or exceed the requirements of the SBTi (Science Based Targets initiative):

reduce our Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions by 75%, over the period 2019 to 2030

reduce our Scope 3 emissions by at least 40%, over the period 2019 to 2030

reduce all emissions by at least 90%, over the period 2019 to 2040

The size of our carbon footprint can be seen in this graph, and is broken down by Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions.

We use the market-based method for reporting our Scope 2 emissions. Scope 3 accounts for 99% of our current emissions. That includes purchased goods and services, capital goods, waste generated in operations, business travel, staff commuting and homeworking, investments and transport of attendees to events.

The bulk of carbon reductions are associated with ‘transport of attendees to events’. These were reduced in the period 2019 to 2021 due to no in-person events taking place during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In addition to setting carbon reduction targets, we have also procured nature-based carbon removal offsets which comply with the UK’s Woodland Carbon Code. This is to ensure that we will be a net zero organisation in the 2040s once our 90% reduction target has been achieved. 

We are dedicated to playing our part in reaching net zero in the UK and have a Carbon Management Plan to ensure that we hit our carbon reduction targets. We will update progress as we continue to review and reduce our carbon emissions.