Many companies are increasingly reticent about making net-zero commitments for fear of being accused of greenwashing or getting sued, because most have declared their long-term climate goals without having built their capacity to measure or manage the process adequately. Conversely, leading construction group, IJM Corporation Berhad is undertaking its Climate Strategy by first establishing a strong foundation through a robust climate assessment.

IJM recognises that climate change is a confounding factor that can affect its financial, intellectual, human, manufactured, social and natural capitals in non-linear and dynamic ways. IJM’s Climate Strategy is one of its main thrusts under the Environment pillar of its Sustainability Roadmap FY2023-FY2025. Launched in March 2022, and endorsed by the IJM board, the group’s Sustainability Roadmap was formulated based on its engagements with stakeholders.

IJM’s Climate Strategy is based on the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) framework and focuses on enhancing the group’s climate resilience as well as reducing its carbon footprint.

IJM started by making an assessment of its GHG emissions for its Malaysian operations for FY2022. The extensive profiling of its Scope 1, Scope 2, and six out of 15 categories of Scope 3 has enabled an accurate representation and understanding of the group’s carbon emissions. With Scope 3 accounting for 84% of the group’s GHG emissions profile, the need for IJM to engage its supply chain is critical for it to achieve its climate goals.

As the group continues to finalise its Climate Strategy, IJM aims to chart its emissions reduction pathway and identify short- and long-term targets in 2023, in line with national goals and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios. IJM will set its baseline year to FY2023, which represents a more normalised year of operations, and will expand its assessment to include the emissions from its operations in India as well as three additional categories of Scope 3.

The methodologies employed are also consistent with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) to facilitate the group’s future commitments. For example, IJM has based its calculations on GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, with scope and boundaries well-defined. In alignment with SBTi’s threshold requirements, IJM decided to include Scope 3 at the onset of its assessment. IJM is also basing its assessment of Scope 3 Category 1 emissions on at least 80% of its purchased goods and services, by value, which is more than the 67% coverage required by SBTi.

Additionally, IJM has identified GHG emissions reduction opportunities through its products and services.

Over the last four decades, IJM’s construction division has been sculpting the landscape of Kuala Lumpur and Malaysia and has been at the forefront of constructing green building projects. To date, 26 green building projects have been successfully completed while two projects are currently in progress.

The group’s property division, led by IJM Land, has emerged as one of the most prominent property developers in Malaysia with sprawling townships, commercial buildings and high-rise condominiums in key growth areas throughout the country. The division is establishing a green building design framework that will introduce a minimum benchmark for all future developments to be certified as “green”.

The group’s industry division, led by Industrial Concrete Products Sdn Bhd (ICP), is the largest manufacturer of high performance pretensioned spun high strength concrete piles (ICP Piles) in Southeast Asia. In 2008, the division started utilising additives in the manufacturing of concrete piles, which reduces its fuel and cement requirements. At present, the division is exploring ways to further reduce the cement content of its products with the use of fly ash or ground granulated blast furnace slag, both by-product materials that have a lower carbon footprint compared with cement.

The group’s port division, which operates Kuantan Port, has developed into a major petrochemical, bulk and container terminal for Malaysia’s East Coast region. Supported by excellent port facilities and services and a strong network of global shipping connections, the port will be a catalyst for the rapid expansion of industrial and manufacturing activities in the East Coast Economic Region. In 2021, Kuantan Port charted its transition to become a green port by 2030, which involves five strategic thrusts — addressing air pollution, carbon footprint, marine pollution, energy and water resource efficiency and systematic waste management control.

The group also owns and operates urban toll concessions in Malaysia, such as Lebuhraya Sungai Besi (Besraya), New Pantai Expressway (NPE) and the inter-urban highway, Lebuhraya Kajang Seremban (LEKAS). The group’s toll division’s highways are highly rated in the green highway index.

IJM’s Climate Strategy is expected to evolve over time but will essentially be based on data-driven insights to anchor discussions and future actions.

The group has embarked on digitally transforming its sustainability data to manage the performance of its Climate Strategy, as well as other sustainability initiatives under the Sustainability Roadmap. IJM kicked off the sustainability digitalisation journey with the launch of its partnership with World Wide Generation (WWG) during its Sustainability Week in October. WWG is a sustainability reporting fintech company, championing trusted data and measuring impact on its G17Eco platform. IJM is the first company in Malaysia to be partnering with WWG on the platform.

In addition to improving the accuracy and traceability of its non-financial data, WWG’s G17Eco platform has a robust taxonomy that will allow IJM to measure and better align the group’s contributions to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The G17Eco platform is a world-class sustainability software that maps, monitors, measures, manages and markets not just inputs and outputs but also the outcomes and impacts to global targets across IJM’s entire value chain in Malaysia and India. IJM will map its sustainability data not just to the data providers but to the data owners as well, who are responsible for managing the performance of the sustainability metrics.

Through the G17Eco platform, blockchain technology is utilised to connect the SDG contributions of IJM and other marketplace participants that will be accessible to stakeholder groups around the world. The platform is comprised of many layers of technology infrastructure, taxonomies, governing councils and interoperability with sectors, systems and apps. The level of interconnectedness and standardisation aims to unlock trusted, comparable and real-time data and impact measurement to empower IJM’s stakeholder assessments and decision-making.

For more details on IJM’s sustainability progress, please refer to the company’s Sustainability Statement in its FY2022 annual report.