A new tool from Egencia enables the travel management company's corporate clients to track carbon emissions from trips and use that data to help reduce the carbon footprint of their travel programs and reach sustainability goals.
Announced Tuesday and available now, Egencia's Carbon Emissions Workspace is a new series of dashboards within the Egencia Analytics Studio—the data visualization platform the company launched in 2018 to help client companies glean actionable insights and savings opportunities from travel data. The workspace features air and hotel travel dashboards, with a dashboard for rail planned to launch early in 2020.
The dashboards use a proprietary algorithm based on international industry standards for tracking emissions. The tool enables managers to track trends, make comparisons and apply filters to perform companywide analyses or measure the emissions effects of a single trip or traveler.
Using insights gained from the dashboards, companies seeking to reduce their carbon footprint can adopt more environmentally friendly travel and accommodation policies, such as increasing air booking price caps so travelers can book direct flights or using more eco-friendly hotels. Egencia's consulting teams will work with clients to review the data and recommend steps to reach sustainability goals, the company said.
Egencia customers also can use the data provided by the dashboards for tax and regulatory purposes, where applicable.
With travel comprising a major portion of many corporations' overall carbon footprint, sustainability increasingly has become a point of emphasis for corporate travel buyers and suppliers alike, with both sides working to reduce the environmental impact of business travel. Pam Massey, deputy director of global travel and mobility for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was named one of BTN's 2019 Best Practitioners for an initiative to incorporate carbon offsets into the organization's air contract with Delta.