Bloomberg LP this spring published its first comprehensive
sustainability report, which included more detail on the environmental impact
of its business travel than do most CSR reports. It also highlighted the
challenges that companies like Bloomberg face when attempting to reduce
business travel emissions. Noting company growth and the need to maintain sales
activity, the privately held media conglomerate concluded that "there is
no expectation that overall travel is a candidate for reduction."
"BLP sales policy, reinforced by management, dictates
sales travel will not be reduced, and in slower business cycles we actually
travel more, so [there are] limited opportunities for reduction,"
according to the report, which also suggested that certain travel sustainability
concepts are "ahead of practice in many areas (green hotels, hybrid car
availability). So while green alternatives are identified, consistent
utilization of these alternatives remains difficult."
The New York-based company with 12,900 employees spread
across 184 global locations indicated that its "key" challenges
include "addressing continued growth in employee travel" and the
associated environmental impact. The department that manages Bloomberg
corporate travel—handled by "three major onsite" operations in New
York, London and Hong Kong," according to the report—as well as an online
expense system and global card programs in 2010 received nearly 54,000 travel
requests, up more than 23 percent from 2009.
According to Bloomberg data, employee business travel and
product transport in 2010 together accounted for 25 percent of total company
emissions, its second-largest category behind energy consumption. Employee
business travel also represented one of just three areas in which equivalent
carbon dioxide (CO2e) was not reduced between 2007 and 2010 (the others being
R&D systems and facilities/data centers). Rather, it increased in absolute
terms to about 37,000 metric tons of CO2e in 2010 from almost 23,000 metric
tons in 2007. During that time period, metric tons of CO2e per employee
increased from 2.39 to 2.66.
Progress
Bloomberg by 2013 aims to reduce by 50 percent its carbon
footprint versus 2007 levels. Though it has failed to cut overall business
travel emissions, it reported some progress.
For example, the company's sales department since 2007
"introduced travel guidelines pushing public transportation in lieu of car
service and rail travel instead of air on heavily traveled short routes."
In 2010, rail accounted for 94 percent of Bloomberg travel between London and
both Paris and Brussels, and 58 percent between New York and Washington.
Also since 2007, Bloomberg in the United States reduced by
12 percent its use of car services. In the United Kingdom, car service use fell
53 percent. According to the sustainability report, these reductions were
achieved by "initially introducing shuttle-bus services from U.K.
Bloomberg offices to airports and rail stations ... and then pushing public transport options, both in the
U.K. and U.S., as a permanent car service alternative wherever feasible."
However, for rail travel and car service alternatives, the
report concluded: "2010 results hint that, with upward pressure on all
travel activity from company growth in the last year, these initiatives may have
reached the limit of their reductions."
In other developments, Bloomberg added "green
options" to its preferred hotel list, which "will expand as
environmentally friendly hotels become more prevalent in major markets."
It also added traveler information to its 2010 travel data, "allowing for
more detailed analysis of our travel activity."
Meanwhile, Bloomberg's "corporate green events
policy" calls for consideration of environmental impacts when addressing
"choice of venue, travel options, food preparation and consumption,
printing of marketing material, vendor relations, and shipments of Bloomberg
materials to and from the event."
Reporting By Mode
The Bloomberg sustainability report used Global Reporting
Initiative G3 Guidelines and guidance from The Climate Group and GHG Protocol
creators World Resources Institute and World Business Council on Sustainable
Development. The company said its emissions calculations "are third-party
assured by Cventure," and added that comments from Ceres, a network of
investors and organizations of which it is a member, helped form the report.
The report included details on exactly which types of
business travel data are collected, by whom and how they compare to previous
years. They include:
Commercial air: Using factors established by the U.K.
Department for Transport and Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs
(DEFRA), air travel is measured in passenger miles—collected by the company's
travel agency, BCD Travel, and sorted by length of haul and class of service—to
produce CO2 per mile and/or kilometer. Total CO2e for air travel in 2010 jumped
more than 30 percent year over year.
Private aircraft: Using factors determined by GHG Protocol,
private jet transport is measured in hours of use in gallons of jet fuel
consumed to calculate CO2 per gallon.
Rail: For journeys with Amtrak in the United States and
Eurostar in the United Kingdom, passenger mile totals and DEFRA factors are
used to determine CO2 per mile and/or kilometer. For both U.S. and U.K. rail
data, BCD is identified as a data source. Total CO2e for rail travel in 2010
was 238 metric tons, 51 percent larger than in 2009.
Car travel: This category encompasses rental cars, car
services, taxis and field service cars. Miles driven, size of car, engine type
(petrol, diesel or hybrid) and DEFRA factors are used to calculate CO2 per mile
and/or kilometer. According to the report, Avis and Hertz provide car rental
data. For car services, UTOG and Concorde in the United States are among those
suppliers providing data. Estimates are used to derive taxi data. Overall for
the car category, CO2e increased 12 percent.
Next Steps
Bloomberg's travel department plans to further promote green
hotels and hybrid cars. Though it acknowledged market deficiencies in these
areas, the company's sustainability report indicated that "the expectation
is at some point the proliferation of these options will be such that they will
become the default options."
Meanwhile, the company "in the near future"
intends to address steadily rising employee travel "as telepresence
technology matures," and mentioned that "business travel hotel
usage" is one area it may include in future reports.
Bloomberg also reported plans to this year expand supply
chain and travel emissions calculations to include methane and nitrogen dioxide.