New standards for measuring greenhouse gas emissions generated by business
travel, planned for release next month by the developers of the widely used GHG Protocol, could guide organizations as they begin
to assess the environmental impact of employee travel. For those organizations
that already measure their business travel carbon footprint, adherence to the
new standards should improve the accuracy and consistency of their data
collection and reporting.
GHG Protocol development partners the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development
in September plan to publish the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting
and Reporting Standard. The GHG Protocol Initiative defines Scope 3 emissions as those "released from sources owned and controlled by other entities in the
value chain, such as materials suppliers, third-party logistics providers, waste
management suppliers, travel suppliers, lessees and lessors, franchisees, retailers,
employees and customers."
"To date, Scope 3 has been a big
bucket for emissions from here, there and everywhere," according to Jonathan
Green from new company Attollo. "The sheer diversity of emissions currently
reported in Scope 3 accounts means it’s difficult—actually nigh on impossible—to
compare performance amongst reporting organizations. The launch of this standard
will bring clarity to the land of Scope 3 confusion."
Green, formerly an associate with JMP
Consultants and sustainable travel manager for the U.K.
Department for Transport and Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
told Business Travel News that the new
Scope 3 standard—three years in the making—has been "driven by the business community." It will lead to "improved
understanding of emissions across business operations and supply chains; the creation
and development of carbon management plans and strategies around managing emissions
from business travel, work-related travel and hotels; and greater levels of visibility
and comparability between organizations," according to Green. "The carbon
question in tender documents will soon become a whole lot clearer. As it does, new
opportunities will emerge."
The latest Scope
3 standard draft defines emissions in the business travel category as those "from
the transportation of employees for business-related activities in vehicles owned
or operated by third parties, such as aircraft, trains, buses and passenger cars. A reporting company’s Scope 3 emissions
from business travel are the Scope 1 [direct] and 2 [certain indirect] emissions
of transportation companies (e.g., airlines)."
According to Green, "It's important not to
read or act on this standard in isolation. It's part of a wider framework of emissions
accounting which travel buyers, managers and suppliers need to understand. It doesn't compel
corporations to account for certain types of emissions. It asks that they consider
emissions from particular sources and make an informed decision on whether they
should be included in their carbon accounts or inventory."
Once finalized, the Scope 3 standard should
help more companies include business travel in annual corporate social responsibility
reports. Many organizations currently do not
mention business travel at all in such reports, and those that do often do so in
passing, with brief comments on how increased videoconferencing has replaced some
travel, for example. The minority of CSR reports that do include business travel
GHG emissions calculations often are incomplete because they don't encompass all
business travel activity (notably hotel stays) and/or don't include data from all
geographies in which organizations operate. In many cases, full baselines only now
are taking shape.
The client
base at Enablon, a Paris-based sustainability management software provider claiming
about 250 customers, "has different levels of maturity," said product
manager Stephen Bauer. An organization's ability
to thoroughly account for its carbon footprint "depends on the granularity
of their data," he said. "Therein lies the challenge: Where do these organizations
get the primary data?"
For business travel, he said, data sources
include the organization's travel agency, some internal systems and, perhaps, self-reported
supplier data. Bauer cautioned that third-party systems like Enablon's can crunch
numbers only on data provided, though initial steps to establish "a general
idea of pounds of CO2 per employee" make for a good start.
The Hotel Dilemma
For many, those initial efforts include
measuring GHG emissions from air travel, rail journeys and possibly car rentals
and internal fleets, but not hotel stays.
In a summary of feedback on the first GHG
Protocol Scope 3 standard
draft, published in October 2009, "a couple commenters
recommended that hotel stays be required, not optional, and that more guidance is
needed on accounting for hotel stays." The newer draft, published in November
2010, did not include that recommendation, and instead uses the original guidance
that the business
travel category "may optionally include emissions from
business travelers staying in hotels."
A research paper published in July by the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research details
the challenges related to gathering reliable and consistent hotel sustainability
information. "What is the carbon footprint of my hotel stay?" asked author
Eric Ricaurte, whose research has focused on standardizing sustainability measurement
within hospitality and tourism. "Surprisingly, each global lodging company
currently provides the answer to this question in a different format, inhibiting
aggregate corporate or event travel carbon footprinting and comparison."
And it's not just carbon measurement.
A full account of a hotel's environmental impact also must include waste management
and energy and water consumption.
"Hotels will need to agree on boundary
specifications such as addressing differences in laundry wash handling, the quantification
of values, such as which emission factors to use and how to allocate rooms versus
function space footprints, and the metrics utilized, such as per occupied room or
per available room," Ricaurte wrote. "Normalization based on amenities
or outlets, climate zones and chain scale segment can help various stakeholders
understand the complexity of hotel footprinting, provided that industry collaboration
coincides with the proprietary sustainability systems lodging companies are developing
internally."
Recently Reported Corporate Travel Sustainability Efforts
Some organizations already have started
to measure Scope 3 emissions, including specific breakouts of business travel emissions
data. Intel, for example, in its latest corporate social responsibility report calculated
that its business travel during 2010 produced an equivalent
carbon dioxide output (CO2e) of 95,000 metric tons, representing less than 1 percent
of the company's total emissions. Such a small fraction is typical among manufacturing
firms while financial services companies, for example, may find business travel
accounts for more than half of total company emissions.
To reduce its
travel-related carbon footprint, Intel in 2010 "more than tripled" the
number of meeting rooms with videoconferencing capabilities and estimated that videoconferencing
"saved employees 57,000 hours of travel time in 2010—a 27 percent increase
over 2009—and saved Intel more than $26 million in travel expenses. In addition,
the reduction in travel helped prevent the release of 22,500 metric tons of CO2
emissions."
In terms of
meeting planning, the company in some cases has "selected hotels that would
reduce the need for ground transportation, designed more efficient lighting, procured
food through local sources and used more recycled materials." Intel's corporate
event marketing and corporate strategic procurement groups also "developed
a Green Events Handbook that covers best practices to improve environmental aspects
in event planning. The handbook will be piloted with 15 of our largest U.S. events
and has the potential to eventually impact the planning of some 1,200 Intel events
each year."
Intel in 2010
also "requested that our travel service supplier label green hotels in the
database that employees use when booking travel, and instituted a survey tool to
understand the impact of the green designations on booking decisions." The
technology firm also "worked with our car rental supplier to increase hybrid
vehicle options and the overall fuel efficiency of our rental car fleet, and promote
'smart-way' car rentals in our online travel tool. We also set internal mileage-per-gallon
and CO2 targets for both our rental vehicles and our leased fleet."
Boston-based financial services company
State Street in its 2010 CSR report claimed to have invested $4 million since 2006
in remote conferencing systems, including "an automated tracking system to
monitor use of teleconferences, as well as a self-reporting tool for users to indicate
when a videoconference replaces travel." The firm added that in 2010 it deployed
desktop videoconferencing capabilities used by 250 employees. Overall, State Street
last year counted an average of 2,200 remote conferences per month, "68 percent
of which were used in lieu of travel."
Though the report included State Street's
annual "indirect Scope 3 (travel)" CO2 emissions since 2007, it also highlighted
the challenges of building a comprehensive baseline. For example, the 2007 figure
covered only North America; 2008 added Europe, the Middle East and Africa; 2009
brought in data from Asia/Pacific; and 2010 (20,855 metric tons of CO2) included
a few additional countries and, for the first time, fleet cars.
The State Street report noted that business
travel emissions data covered air, rail and car journeys but made no mention of
hotels. It also pointed out that the company "has relied on its travel agents
to provide air mileage data, and in some cases the mileage data provided may be
based on different data measurement techniques from region to region."
Other organizations recently publishing
CSR reports that touched on business travel include:
• Bell Canada, a communications company
that claimed to increase remote conferencing last year by 70 percent from 2010 levels,
resulting in 67,000 "video calls" and "more than 264,000 teleconferences" that combined reduced greenhouse
gas emissions by 2,322 metric tons.
• Vodafone, which by March 2011 achieved its objective of trialing a new carbon
offset program by commissioning climate-offset firm ClimateCare "to offset air travel emissions from U.K.-based Group
employees, through projects that meet recognized verification standards."
• Boeing, which claimed that employees
during 2010 "conducted more than
875,000 virtual meetings that included an estimated 8.8 million attendees.
• Hess Corp., which reported 2010 business travel emissions "on commercial aircraft" of roughly
19,661 metric tons of CO2e, which it "offset through the purchase of 20,000
carbon credits certified to the Voluntary Carbon Standard."