Science Museum Group Sustainability Policy
Climate change and the sixth mass extinction of biodiversity are the most urgent threats and challenges facing humanity and are integral to the Science Museum Group’s mission to Inspire Futures.
The science of climate change is clear. Radical decarbonisation across all sectors is urgently needed to keep global temperature rises below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century, as set out in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) 1.5 report October 2018.
Our programme on climate change and sustainability focuses on how science and engineering has been and is driving current technological and nature-based solutions towards reducing the impacts of climate change. Our collection reflects the scientific innovations which have shaped our world. Intrinsic to these stories is the impact of human ingenuity on planet Earth and on global climate change. We are uniquely placed to inspire our audiences of five million who visit our sites each year including over 400,000 educational visits and our 11 million digital audience to explore the impact of our past and the opportunities for our future in terms of tackling biodiversity loss, mitigating and adapting to climate change.
To inspire futures, we are scientific in our approach to sustainability, being data led and embracing technology and innovation and using international consensus climate science from the IPCC.
Working with external advisers we calculated our carbon footprint for 2019/20. This provided our baseline year for our commitment to achieve net zero by 2033, which is underpinned by science-based absolute emission carbon reduction targets that are consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
We have set a target to decarbonise our scopes 1 and 2 carbon emissions (such as electricity, water, gas & biomass) and our scope 3 emissions (including our supply chain, waste, business travel and investments) by 59% in order to meet our net zero by 2033 commitment. We are committed to reduce, reuse, refuse and recycle, and use resources more efficiently while still investing in and developing our historic estate in a sustainable way. We will also remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through investing in quality nature-based solutions in the UK such as planting of native, locally sourced trees in the UK in the right place at the right time, or the management of peatland to reach net zero.
We will ensure that we conserve and enhance biodiversity at all our sites and are working towards publishing a Nature Recovery Plan for the Science Museum Group. Building on our carbon emissions reductions over the past decade, we will move forward with the intention of leading public engagement in the UK on the science of climate change and the technological and nature-based challenges and opportunities around energy and food transitions and greenhouse gas removals.
We are committed to working with funders who are also on a journey to decarbonise. We do this by assessing prospective and current partners using the independent Transition Pathway Initiative (TPI) tool). This joint initiative of the National Investing Bodies of the Church of England and the Environment Agency Pension Fund was launched in 2017 with a mission to assess the progress of large corporations on the transition to a low-carbon economy, supporting efforts by investors to address climate change. We ask all current and prospective partners in the energy sector that are involved in fossil fuel extraction to: Achieve Level 4 on the TPI Management Quality index (TPI rates companies from 0 – 4) and to achieve long-term alignment with the Paris 1.5 degree pathway on TPI’s Carbon Performance index.
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