Taking action for a sustainable future

We are committed to protecting our planet and believe it is our duty to use natural resources responsibly and proactively to address environmental challenges.

Governance

As discussed in more detail in the corporate social responsibility section, our Nominating & Corporate Governance Committee oversees our corporate social responsibility objectives and initiatives.

Strategy

Our strategy for environmental sustainability focuses on strategic impact areas aligned with potential business risks. As a professional services firm, we do not engage in manufacturing, product distribution, or hazardous waste generation. Due to the nature of our business, our offices have low water consumption, but we remain observant of any need for water recycling initiatives should that change.

While we acknowledge the carbon emissions resulting from office operations and business travel, we have demonstrated our ability to achieve business growth and deliver exceptional client outcomes while reducing our travel requirements and thoughtfully maintaining our corporate leased office spaces.

In 2024, we continued our collaboration with Climate Vault to neutralize our Scope 1 and Scope 2 GHG emissions.. Climate Vault is an award-winning nonprofit organization that takes a quantifiable, market-based approach to decreasing carbon emissions by removing carbon pollution allowances from government-regulated carbon markets. Because there is a cap on the number of allowances available, this effectively decreases carbon dioxide emissions in a quantifiable and verifiable way.

Climate Vault also supports and advances carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies through its Technology Chamber – an assembled team of scientists, policy experts and academics who evaluate RFP proposals for innovative CDR projects and provide grant funding on an annual basis.

In addition to working with organizations such as Climate Vault, we leveraged renewable energy sources in our corporate headquarters in Chicago at the end of 2024 with the aim of lowering our Scope 2 emissions.

Key aspects of our sustainability approach

Resource conservation: We seek procurement opportunities and implement operational conservation measures to minimize natural resource consumption.

Reuse and recycling: Our commitment to sustainability includes reusing and recycling when feasible. We responsibly manage waste streams, including e-waste and water, as relevant to our business.

Our dedicated and highly engaged workforce plays a vital role in our sustainability strategy. To align with Sustainable Development Goal 13 (SDG 13) and our commitment to climate action, we prioritize educating and raising awareness among our employees about climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning.

cultivating eco-friendly habits, and enhancing environmental awareness among our workforce. The Huron Chooses Green Challenge featured three primary missions:

In November 2024, our fifth annual sustainability challenge took place, reinforcing our ongoing dedication to promoting sustainable practices,

Employees enthusiastically participated in this two-week event, collectively completing nearly 600 sustainability-focused activities. These activities ranged from adopting sustainable lifestyle changes to consuming educational content. As a direct outcome of these collective efforts, our employees were responsible for

diverting 45,200 pounds of waste from landfills and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 130 pounds.

Through the Huron Chooses Green Challenge, we enriched our employees’ knowledge with a lunch and learn session focused on the conservation movement and actionable changes that can be implemented in our daily lives for a greener Earth. This initiative aimed to empower our workforce to make informed, sustainable choices and contribute to positive environmental impact.

For the second year in a row, Huron worked with SankalpTaru Foundation to plant trees across India. Focused on environmental conservation, SankalpTaru combines technology and nature by managing reforestation projects and empowering rural farmers. The “Huron Forest Project” is helping to transform barren lands into green spaces in Bangalore, Chennai, Pune, Delhi and Ajmer/Alwar. This year, we planted 2,300 trees bringing our total to 4,100 trees over two years and the equivalent of 2,123.4 tonnes of CO2 absorbed.

Take action around your home: Focused on encouraging personal actions.

Take action in your community: Highlighting the importance of driving change in local communities.

Take action with the Sustainability network: Centered around collaborative engagement with colleagues through live events organized by Huron’s Sustainability network.

Climate-related risks and opportunities

Our approach to addressing climate-related risks and opportunities is comprehensive, encompassing considerations from physical, regulatory, and operational standpoints. Recognizing the significance of these factors, our Enterprise Risk Management Committee reviews and evaluates our exposure to climate-related risks.

As a professional services firm, our day-to-day operations are generally less directly affected by climate change compared with other industries. However, we remain mindful of the potential for business disruptions caused by extreme weather events, such as flooding, wildfires, or power supply disruptions. Continuing to adopt a hybrid work environment helps to mitigate such disruptions as our employees can effectively serve clients with reduced travel through remote work. Employee safety risks posed by climate events are mitigated through our partnership with International SOS, which enables us to monitor business travel and ensure the well-being of our employees during crises, including natural disasters. Further details regarding our commitment to employee safety, particularly during business travel, can be found in our Health and Safety Policy.

^{Employees volunteering at the Atlanta Park Clean Up}

Metrics

_{^{Fig. 14. A graph of Huron’s greenhouse gas emissions}}

As a global professional services organization, our operational carbon footprint primarily consists of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions derived from our corporate leased office spaces and employee travel. As our organization continues to grow, we endeavor to reduce our impact and emissions where feasible.

In 2024, we continued our efforts to track our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions data, working with AccountAbility, a third-party global consultancy firm. While we made progress in our data collection processes, we continue to rely on activity data estimations for the calculations as illustrated in figure 14.

Our organization grew, both in headcount and our office footprint, in 2024, so our overall emissions increased slightly from our 2023 calculations. However, we continue to demonstrate our commitment to limiting carbon emissions through an overall reduction of over 50% from our 2019 baseline.

We also continue to see a significant decline in our GHG emissions per employee from 2019. In 2024, we reduced our overall GHG emissions per employee by more than 77% compared with 2019.