New Business Travel Emissions Reporting Standards Expected Next Month

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."