JLL has released its Global Sustainability Report 2020 today, emphasizing the firm’s commitment to achieving long-term value to stakeholders by focusing its sustainability efforts on delivering resilient buildings, healthy spaces and inclusive places.

In 2020, JLL set a science-based target to reduce emissions by 2034 and also committed to net zero emissions from its own buildings by 2030. These commitments are milestones to enable the firm to achieve net zero by 2040 across all areas of its operations, including the client sites it manages. The report details JLL’s strategy for meeting these goals.

“Our sustainability report shows great progress on our journey to net zero,” said Christian Ulbrich, JLL CEO. “As a core strategic priority, we are embedding and growing sustainability products and services across all our business lines, consistent with JLL’s purpose of shaping the future of real estate for a better world.”

“2021 is all about the road to net zero and we have focused our efforts on achieving this. But our sustainability program is not exclusively about carbon,” added Richard Batten, JLL’s Global Chief Sustainability Officer. “As our 2020 report demonstrates, we have made significant progress against our targets and set new ambitious targets, in part responding to the impact of the pandemic, across all of the ESG metrics.”

2020 performance highlights include:

295 sustainable building certifications for clients
20,629 metric tons CO2e averted by advising on renewable energy projects
35% of the global workforce are women
One of the World’s Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute, 14th successive year
79 JLL offices with sustainable building certifications
23.7% reduction in scope 1 and 2 emissions across JLL’s own real estate and fleet, compared with 2018 baseline
77% reduction in emissions from business travel, compared to 2019
All-time low for employee accident rates, a 44% Lost Time Injury Rate reduction from 2018
$7.7 million and 7,959 days of employee time contributed to community causes

Looking to the future, JLL is committing to a new set of ambitious targets. One goal includes increasing employee time in the community to 23,500 days by the end of 2023, to mitigate against a reduction in community volunteering time last year due to the pandemic.

Diversity and inclusion emerged as the top priority for JLL internal and external stakeholders
Due to the pandemic, JLL accelerated the timeline of its materiality review to December 2020 from late 2021. Findings showed that the social aspect of ESG, specifically diversity and inclusion, was identified as the most important issue for JLL. Other top priorities included: ethics and compliance, corporate culture and reputation, innovation and technology, energy and climate, employee engagement and satisfaction, and adaptation and resilience.

Financial risks of climate change scenarios on real assets better understood
In 2019, JLL adopted the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations to understand climate risks impacting the organization. The 2020 report provides a qualitative assessment focused on direct physical climate risk to eight of JLL’s leased headquarter offices. In the next phase, JLL will continue to stress test the building and market resilience of its own operations, evaluate the implications for clients and also expand its scope to review the wider impacts on society, markets and the firm’s people.

JLL established four new approaches in 2020:

to assess and drive SDG-influenced opportunities in JLL’s value chain
to expand waste and circularity impacts in JLL’s real estate
to review focus areas among JLL’s employees and improve data collection to measure progress
through a new goal, to align 75% of community activities to JLL’s priority SDGs (by the end of 2022)
Find out more by downloading the JLL 2020 Global Sustainability Summary (8 pages) and/or the full JLL 2020 Global Sustainability Report at jll.com/sustainability.