An update on our ambition to achieve net zero carbon emissions

It’s a long way to 2050, so Qantas Super’s net zero journey has been broken down into three phases. In Phase 1, we originally expressed our aim to achieve a 24 percent reduction in carbon emissions from a 30 June 2020 baseline by 2025.

While we are on track to meet this interim target, having achieved a 20 per cent reduction to date, we are now updating this target to bring Qantas Super in line with evolving Australian Government and peer commitments.

We’re updating this target in two ways.

Firstly, we are changing our interim target milestone from 2025 to 2030.

In 2022, the Government passed Australia’s Climate Change Act, which legislated a target of 43% emissions reduction by 2030 (against a 2005 baseline) and the goal of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

As 2030 is a key milestone both nationally and globally on the pathway to net zero, we are aligning our interim target milestone from 2025 to 2030 for consistency in tracking and reporting.

We will also be changing the metric we use for our interim target.

When we first embarked on this journey, a measure called Weighted Average Carbon Intensity (WACI) was the industry’s preferred carbon metric. WACI measures tons of carbon emissions per million dollars of revenue.

Today, our research shows the dominant metric used by super funds is Financed Emissions Intensity, which measures tons of carbon emissions per million dollars invested. In 2023 we expanded the coverage and methodology of our annual carbon assessment, providing us with a more complete picture of Financed Emissions Intensity across our portfolio and enabling us to set a corresponding target.

We will still track WACI, along with absolute emissions, however Qantas Super is now targeting a 45% reduction in Financed Emissions Intensity (Scope 1 and 2) across our investment portfolio by 2030, from a 30 June 2023 baseline. This will help ensure we can more easily measure and compare Qantas Super’s progress against that of the broader industry.

When it comes to measuring a company’s carbon emissions, there are a couple of different categories to look at.

Scope 1 emissions cover the greenhouse gas emissions that a company generates directly – for example, the emissions from a delivery company’s vehicles.

Scope 2 emissions, meanwhile, are indirect emissions produced on the company’s behalf, associated with the purchase of energy – for example, the emissions produced to heat and cool its office buildings.

Scope 3 are all the other emissions a company is indirectly responsible for, up and down its value chain, for example associated with the products it buys from suppliers. We do track the Scope 3 emissions of our holdings, but data availability and quality are not yet at a point where we can set a meaningful target.