From urgency to action, McKinsey is leading the way in sustainability.
McKinsey aspires to be our profession’s preeminent impact partner and advisor on sustainability, climate, energy transition, and environmental, social, and governance (ESG)—from the board room to the engine room. We are working with clients to lead a wave of innovation and economic growth that safeguards our planet and advances sustainability.
McKinsey is “in the arena” with our clients, and wants to be a leading catalyst for global decarbonization. We’re working to help all industry sectors transform to reach net zero by 2050, balanced with other sustainability goals and tailored to regional contexts. We do this by leveraging our thought leadership, innovative tools and solutions, top talent, and a vibrant ecosystem of industry associations and knowledge platforms focused on innovating to net zero.
Accelerating deployment of net-zero technologies
To achieve net zero, the world needs technological innovation, deployment, and scale-up at unprecedented speed.
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To implement these technologies at scale, decision makers need clarity on how they work: the science, capital investment requirements, scaling economics, prices, regulations, environmental impact, and much more. They need to understand where those factors stand today and how they’re likely to change over time. That’s a challenge in this evolving category, where the deployment scale is relatively small and technology advances with astonishing speed.
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We launched the McKinsey Platform for Climate Technologies (MPCT) to help clients plan, execute, and scale the implementation of these critical technologies. MPCT works with the world’s leading experts to anticipate the impact of new technologies and challenge conventional approaches to established ones. We focus on the most critical technologies: those with the potential to transform our sources of energy for every industry, region, and community.
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Materials are the next frontier of decarbonization
Representing approximately 20 percent of global GHG emissions, materials are a critical step on the path to decarbonization. Today, companies are rapidly ramping up climate commitments, and in turn, this raises the need and ambition to source sustainable materials.
The production capacity for low-emissions materials is set to fall short of future demand in the next 30 years. To meet ambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets and stay on course to achieve net-zero emissions, we must decarbonize materials-derived emissions at unprecedented scale and speed, which requires collaboration across the value chain from production and sourcing to use and implementation.
Sustainable Materials Hub
McKinsey’s Sustainable Materials Hub empowers organizations to solve the sustainable materials challenge and achieve carbon reduction commitments through the production and sourcing of low-carbon materials.
McKinsey’s Sustainable Materials Hub empowers organizations to solve the sustainable materials challenge and achieve carbon reduction commitments through the production and sourcing of low-carbon materials. We bring together experts at every step of the value chain and offer in-depth insights on the supply, demand, and low-carbon premiums across a wide range of commodities.
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We focus on sustainable materials with the highest potential to close the carbon emissions gap while supporting our clients in the design of value-creating strategies to produce, commercialize, and source low-carbon and circular materials, including:
Emissions identification and transparency
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We create transparency on materials-related greenhouse gas emissions baselines, broken out at the asset and product level: for producers, by site, step in the production process and equipment, and for purchasers, by supplier, production route, geography, and asset.
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Operational decarbonization
We define a realistic materials-related decarbonization aspiration with a comprehensive library of abatement levers across different materials and value chains, develop the roadmap necessary to achieve those goals, and support the implementation of identified levers.
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Premium capture
We segment material category offerings by carbon and circularity levels and support clients in capturing the associated green premium.
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Sourcing and circularity strategies
We develop scope 3 reduction pathways, via sourcing and circularity strategies for clients along the value chain, informed by a combination of our unique tools and expertise.
Accelerating the transition
At COP27, McKinsey Sustainability convened CEOs, experts, and thought leaders who all share a commitment to accelerating the transition to net-zero to help inform the global conversation.
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McKinsey Platform for Climate Technologies
We launched the McKinsey Platform for Climate Technologies (MPCT) to help clients plan, execute, and scale the implementation of critical climate technologies. We focus on the most critical technologies: those with the potential to transform our sources of energy for every industry, region, and community.
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