Carbon and Climate

Reducing the Environmental Impact of Our Operations

To achieve our 2025 Goal to reduce our greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 50% against a 2019 base year and to reach zero carbon by 2030, we continuously assess our environmental footprint and explore areas for innovation and improvement. To date, we are making important progress toward halving emissions from our 2019 base year, with emissions declining 33% in 2021 compared to base year levels. Compared to the previous year, emissions rose 7%, mostly due to the waning impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. To reverse trends across all emission categories and continue making progress toward our goals, McKinstry will continue to work on programs that target specific emission sources.

Electrifying Our Fleet and an Entire Industry

McKinstry has taken the driver’s seat to define industry-leading best practices for fleet electrification — addressing the challenges faced in our own journey while also developing models that will accelerate fleet decarbonization for the entire construction industry.

Vehicle fleet emissions account for nearly half of all emissions from McKinstry’s business. In 2022, we took a critical step in our plan to reduce these emissions, incorporating four EV trucks into our fleet. Lessons learned from pilot studies with these vehicles are informing how McKinstry will begin to rapidly phase greater numbers of EVs into our fleet, eventually replacing all 700+ fleet vehicles with EVs and other zero-carbon technologies. Considerations for this transition include the challenges of sourcing EV trucks that are equipped to meet our business requirements and accommodating home vehicle charging for our workers.

Leading Our Clients Toward a Zero-Carbon Future

McKinstry partners with our clients to create innovative and cost-effective ways of building a zero- carbon future.

Winona State University

McKinstry and Winona State University partnered to deliver annual guaranteed utility and operational cost savings of approximately $673,000 — a 23.8% reduction in utility costs and a total savings of $26 million over the project’s 25-year lifetime.

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King County Metro

With aggressive sustainability and carbon reduction goals established in King County’s 2020 Climate Action Plan, Metro partnered with McKinstry to support their journey to achieve a 100% zero-emissions fleet by 2035. The project successfully reinforced the county’s commitment to convert buses and fleet by upgrading transit bases at the end of their useful life to battery electric buses (BEB) and BEB enabling infrastructure. Importantly, this project included the development of a battery electric charger test facility where different combinations of BEB manufacturers and chargers can be tested.

Salt Lake City School District

Along with installing solar panels on school rooftops, we’re helping the district implement LED light upgrades, waste-water conservation upgrades and electrical projects at numerous schools. These efforts are expected to reduce annual utility costs by more than $1 million while reducing the district’s carbon footprint by 30% and water consumption by 11 million gallons.

Partnering to Drive Change

MEP 2040 Climate Pledge

MEP 2040

In December, McKinstry became a signatory of MEP 2040, an initiative of the Carbon Leadership Forum. MEP 2040 brings system engineering firms together to advocate for and achieve net-zero carbon in their projects as well as to achieve net-zero operational carbon by 2030 and net-zero embodied carbon by 2040.

“The built environment generates nearly 40% of global energy-related carbon emissions. Joining the MEP 2040 Challenge represents another tangible step towards facing the climate crisis. Together, we can accelerate our decarbonization goals to reduce our environmental impact.”

—Michael Frank, VP Engineering and Design

Climate Pledge

In 2020, McKinstry joined The Climate Pledge, which calls on signatories to be net zero carbon across their businesses by 2040 — a decade ahead of the Paris Climate Agreement’s goal of 2050.

Throughout 2022, in continued partnership, we attended initiative-hosted meetings and engaged with other signatories to forward critical work that decarbonizes the built environment.

“The construction industry has a tremendous opportunity to combat the climate crisis by reducing the carbon footprint of buildings. We are prepared to take bold action to create a new standard for buildings that restores the balance between the built and natural environments.”

—Dean Allen, CEO