Society
We are an active member of society, contributing to its sustainable development. We avoid taking on projects that are damaging to society or destructive to the natural environment.
Our planet faces significant challenges related to climate change, biodiversity, resource scarcity, and rapid urbanisation, which impact vulnerable areas and communities around the world.
We help tackle these challenges to enable a more sustainable society where people and nature flourish. We do this through our expertise, solutions, corporate behaviour, and our support to underserved groups and stakeholders.
Striving for a positive impact on society
Our efforts are prioritised across the four unifying sustainability themes in our strategy: Decarbonising for net zero, Resilient societies and liveability, Resource management and circular economy, and Biodiversity ecosystems. Our largest impact on society is through the projects, designs, and consultancy that we deliver to clients and stakeholders.
In line with our strategy, we continue to progress on our ambition to be the leader in the green energy transition in our industry. This is demonstrated by our growing portfolio of renewable energy projects. It is also exemplified by our continuous redeployment of our oil and gas experts to serve the growing need for renewable energy and low-carbon solutions. In doing so, we are conscious of ensuring sustainability of energy generation based on renewables, and overall security of energy supply.
We also go beyond projects to support underserved communities to make a positive impact on society. Many of our employees contribute through volunteering activities, while our engagement with students in science-, technology-, engineering-, and math- (STEM) related fields builds knowledge and networks to help solve local and global challenges.
Resilient societies and liveability
Climate change often amplifies negative impacts on vulnerable people and communities. The challenge lies in defining adaptation and resilience measures that directly address the inequality posed by climate change. In turn, that makes it vital to address the need for a just transition to a more sustainable future.
“Some professions and regions will benefit greatly from investment and job creation, while others will find themselves out of jobs in the sectors we must abandon. Even in the most liveable cities, life is extremely hard for people living on the edge.” says Line Dybdal.
“So, if we are to create truly inclusive societies and liveable urban communities, we must rapidly close a number of gaps.”
Volunteering to help societies flourish
We strengthened our charitable and voluntary efforts during 2023 with Flourish, our global social impact programme, run in partnership with the Ramboll Foundation.
The programme aims to establish a more proactive, coherent, and impactful approach to increasing our societal impact through volunteering and donations. It invites employees to use their skills in volunteering projects during their work time.
Employee volunteering hours across the UK, US, and India
In 2023, we registered a total of 3,762 volunteering hours across the UK, US, and India. Employees engaged in many different types of projects, including strengthening educational activities for students in STEM networks and internships, as well as helping local communities build, operate, and maintain facilities.
For example, in Uttar Pradesh, India, our employees, together with NGO Prayatna, provided long-term community support to vulnerable villages affected by climate change and livelihood depletion. We provided engineering capabilities for infrastructure support, such as school drinking water and streetlights, water conservation and drainage, as well as tree planting, school and playground renovation, and street development.
Talking STEM, sparking innovation
We want to motivate and inspire women and girls to pursue careers in STEM. During 2023, we again collaborated with the annual national event in Denmark, Science Day, and welcomed students to our headquarters in Copenhagen, to inspire and motivate them to choose a career in science.
We also held several STEM events at our five sites in Germany to give girls a creative and hands-on introduction to STEM professions at Ramboll. Furthermore, we participated in an educational event at the German Federal Chancellery, where we introduced students to engineering and wind turbines.
In addition, we ran our SPARK innovation programme, which invites cross-partner collaboration to help solve key sustainability challenges. In 2023, we partnered with our client SSE Renewables and four different universities in Scotland to develop an approach that addresses the biodiversity challenge hand–in-hand with decarbonising our energy systems.
More than 30 students worked on finding scalable solutions that deliver nature positivity across SSE’s operational fleet of 50 onshore wind farms in the UK and Ireland, and the winning team will work with Ramboll to further test and develop their idea.
We also partnered with our key client Equinor and the University of California, Berkeley, Hass School of Business, to host a case competition in which students were tasked with outlining a roadmap for the implementation of 25GW of floating offshore wind capacity along California’s coastline by 2045. The winning team had the opportunity to further develop their solution with an innovation sprint expert from Ramboll.
“Being part of SPARK has been a learning journey. The cross-disciplinary insights and the collaborative spirit across organisations has been an enriching experience that refuels my passion for making a meaningful impact.”
Engaging partners globally
Throughout 2023, we continued to drive the climate agenda towards policymakers and clients on the global stage. At COP28, we joined forces with Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) to launch a new Urban Lab. Set to commence in 2024, it will investigate the concept of regenerative urban development, distilling core principles by drawing from Singapore as a case study.
At New York Climate Week, we hosted several events and invited policymakers, clients, experts, and professionals to come together and collaborate for climate action. We also formally joined the Global Offshore Wind Alliance (GOWA), a leading public-private forum that aims to accelerate global offshore wind capacity. As the only consultancy part of GOWA, we will contribute with our deep knowledge and understanding of the global offshore wind market to help scale it internationally to meet decarbonisation goals.
Ramboll has been an early and eager champion of a joint green hydrogen market between Denmark and Germany. In 2023, our efforts paid off as the two countries signed a memorandum of understanding to build a cross-border green hydrogen pipeline by 2028.
Further, we joined forces with industry leaders in signing the German-Danish Offtake Declaration on green hydrogen. Our joint call urges the Danish and German governments to advance hydrogen infrastructure with a cross-border pipeline, by 2028. This is crucial for meeting the EU’s 10 million tons green hydrogen target by 2030.
As CEO Jens-Peter Saul put it while addressing the German-Danish Chamber of Commerce:
“Europe is facing a climate and energy challenge at unprecedented scale. This calls for even more cross-border energy cooperation. Businesses on both sides of the Danish-German border play a key role in delivering the political ambition to decarbonise Europe.”
Engagements
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (left) met with Ramboll Americas Managing Director Cheryl Ginyard-Jones during a celebration of Denmark’s Constitution Day at the Embassy of Denmark in Washington, D.C.
Credit: Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark
Ramboll has joined forces with Singapore’s Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC) to launch a new Urban Lab.
Credit: Center for Liveable Cities Singapore
New insights
In addition to sharing our expertise on the global stage, we drive change by generating new knowledge together with partners in private, public, and NGO sectors.
Together with Arcadis, we launched a report titled “Decarbonising the Infrastructure Sector,” which highlights best practice approaches through the whole life cycle of infrastructure projects, providing a useful guide for consulting engineers and contractors in the sector. The report was launched at the International Federation of Consulting Engineers (FIDIC) session during the Global Infrastructure Conference in Singapore.
We also published several whitepapers, among which is a unique study that compares differences in Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) methodologies in the built environment. To help the buildings industry, our experts developed a benchmarking database of building carbon footprints that accommodates LCA method variations.
The owner of Ramboll, The Ramboll Foundation, donated 28 million DKK in 2023 to promote sustainable development for the benefit of nature, society, and people.
Donations are given to projects within research and education, as well as to those that support humanitarian efforts and strengthen civil society, often with direct involvement of Ramboll employees.
The Ramboll Foundation views Ramboll employees as priority stakeholders. As such, it provides financial support to both former and current employees, along with their families, during challenging times. In 2023, Ramboll employees, Ramboll, and the Ramboll Foundation donated DKK 409,764 to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to support people in Türkiye and Syria affected by the earthquake.