Our social and environmental commitment

What we have done so far

We are working with Net Zero Now to ensure we accurately measure, reduce and compensate for our greenhouse gas emissions.

We have set a science-based target to reduce our emissions in line with the ambitious criteria of the SBTi and verified by Net Zero Now.

2022 was the most recent full year of carbon emissions data when we started calculating our Scope 1, 2 & 3 emissions. 2022 will be used as our baseline for all current and future emissions reporting.

Our Carbon Footprint and Net Zero targets have been calculated by Net Zero Now in accordance with the requirements of the Net Zero Financial Advisors Protocol. The Net Zero Financial Advisors Protocol was developed in collaboration with SimplyBiz, FINTEL, LIONTRUST and CISI as a free guide to help financial advisors in the UK implement a strategy and achieve Net Zero.

Our reports are available here.

What we need to do next and ongoing monitoring

Achieving Net Zero is a journey – and one that will constantly evolve as our business continues to grow. Deliberately founded as a climate conscious company, our journey may be easier to implement than others, but we still have work to do to get there, and it does not simply stop when we reach our goal.

As we gain a better understanding of where we are along this journey, and improve the accuracy of our reporting metrics, we will regularly update this statement with our progress on where we are along this pathway.

Some of our to do list includes:

• Ongoing monitoring of the suitability of proposed Net Zero investment portfolio providers within the wider financial market, to increase the number of Net Zero investment options for our clients.
• Ensuring our offices and staff members’ homes are powered by renewable energy via green tariffs.
• Regular reporting on our energy usage, and our business travel, to better quantify our emissions, identify where our efficiencies are, and offsetting where we need to.
• Ensure ongoing commitment to our environmental and green office policies, particularly as we increase our UK presence and grow our business.

Contributing to global carbon neutrality

As a service company we already have a relatively low carbon-footprint but sometimes we may produce emissions that we simply cannot avoid.

To help counter those types of emissions, Path will ensure that we give something back – via contributing to carbon offsetting programs that have been endorsed and verified by highly rated environmental stewardship groups.

Carbon offsetting schemes have attracted some controversy, with unscrupulous companies using such schemes to avoid changing their operations to appear more eco-friendly than they really are. Additionally, some carbon offset schemes are not as green as they appear, and due diligence is required to ensure that any scheme selected is providing robust and transparent projects that are actively making a difference.

The Net Zero Initiative suggests we move away from referring to this process as ‘Offsetting’ – which implies that investing into such a scheme cancels out a company’s own emissions. Instead, offsetting needs to be viewed as our company voluntarily contributing to global carbon neutrality, while doing everything possible to reduce our emissions through company policy.

Carbon offsetting only works when done alongside everything possible to reduce our company emissions, as a last resort where we cannot directly eliminate the emissions in question.

Not only will we contribute the required amount to achieve our Net Zero goals – as pioneers in the field of positive impact, we’ll contribute more where we can and encourage other business to do the same.