Environment

Our Environmental Policy Statement provides a framework to support our progress towards our environmental objectives and address the associated risks with our own business operations. It covers climate change, energy, pollution, waste, water, travel and our supply chain.

We monitor and report on our corporate emissions using the World Resources Institute and World Business Council for Sustainability Development Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard.

Tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e)

First Sentier Investors December 2023

¹ Data may differ from that reported in prior First Sentier Investors reports, due to improvements in our calculation methodology, and updating our data using the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Global Warming Potential (GWP), from the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) to the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) values. We have restated all years for comparability.

² In 2023, we expanded our Scope 3 reporting to Category, 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8. These emissions categories are reported for the first time in 2024 for the 2023 period.

Calculation notes on our Emissions

Emission factors for Scopes 1 and 2 reference published regional emissions factors from government and utility publications. Emission factors for Scope 3 emissions are based on DEFRA UK’s and the US EPA EEIO published emission conversion factors.

Our Scope 1 emissions are from the combustion of natural gas in our Edinburgh office and currently excludes diesel (as part of stationary combustion) and refrigerants - these are expected to be immaterial to our operational GHG inventory. We do not have any company vehicles, and therefore no associated transport fuel contributing to our Scope 1 emissions.

For our Scope 2 emissions, we use actual consumption data from our head-leased offices and estimates for our serviced offices (where consumption data is not available), using our global energy data and scaled by office area. Serviced offices make up <5% of our total global net lettable area (NLA). We purchase renewable energy via energy retailer tariffs or Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) for our global offices. Steam heating is limited to our New York office.

We use dual reporting for our Scope 2 emissions. A location-based method reflects the average emissions intensity of grids on which energy consumption occurs (using mostly grid-average emission factor data). A market-based method reflects emissions from electricity that First Sentier Investors has purposefully chosen. This takes into account our procurement of renewable electricity. It derives emission factors from contractual instruments, which include any type of contract between two parties for the sale and purchase of energy bundled with attributes about the energy generation, or for unbundled attribute claims.

On our Scope 3 emissions, we have previously focused on our reporting on corporate business travel including flights, accommodation and car hire. During 2023, we expanded our Scope 3 reporting to include emissions arising from employee commuting, working from home, water, waste and fuel and energy related emissions not already included in Scope 1 or Scope 2 (defined as Category 3 by the GHG Protocol). We continue to evolve the reporting of our material Scope 3 emissions alongside continual improvements in our data. Where available, we use actual data for calculating our Scope 3 emissions. However, where data availability is limited, we apply estimation models to extrapolate this across our global footprint. Our global purchased goods and services emissions are currently calculated using a spend-based methodology.

For more information on definitions and our emissions calculation methodology, please refer to the Appendix notes in the 2023 Corporate Sustainability Report.