Most corporate travel managers are still on their first steps on their sustainability journeys. It is clear that, no matter what the messages are that are emerging from the EU or the White House, that more companies are taking those steps.
Those companies in the early stages of their sustainability journeys will quickly mature thanks to the proliferation of technology and expertise in the market today.
“There is an expectation in the uplift of the quality of sustainability data to finance-level, audited data,” says CTM’s head of sustainability Lauren Hook. “What this means is the need for accurate and timely data will become increasingly important for businesses at both ends of the sustainability maturity spectrum.”
While we have seen that companies are reacting to regulatory pressure more than anything else in their sustainability strategies, peer pressure is also important.
“We are seeing very significant pressure being applied by some of the largest companies in the world, in particular, Microsoft, AstraZeneca, Salesforce, Schneider Electric and Siemens [are] asking their suppliers to report on their emissions and set up their own forward-looking targets,” says Adam Braun, founder and CEO of Clarasight.
“We actually believe that added business pressure is more powerful than just the regulatory pressure. Often, we're hearing from companies who are saying we need to do more than just report on last year's emissions. We now need to set credible targets going forward and then have both a system of record and a system of action to be able to credibly achieve that goal.”
Thrust Carbon’s CEO Kit Aspen believes we will see more carbon budgets being used by corporates. Indeed, Concur is set to facilitate carbon budgets in its booking tool this quarter.
In May, Thrust Carbon’s CEO Kit Apsen told BTN Europe that it will be the first organisation to take advantage of the new capability, with “several corporates lined up for the initial rollout, including a mix of Fortune 500s.”
Aspen believes that carbon budgets at the team level will be the most popular. “How can an individual make that decision? If they think their trip is more important than their boss's trip in two months’ time they’re going to book it anyway,” he says. “There are also many places out there where there is only one flight a day. If your carbon budget says you now have to reduce your carbon by 10 per cent then that is useless information – you are going to take that one flight.”
He continues: “When you have budgets at a division level with 10,000 people, it is too impersonal. What does it matter that you are emitting one tonne of CO2 when the division still has thousands of tonnes to emit.” Teams are therefore the sweetspot where a budget is most meaningful and can truly change behaviour and thus impact.
FLYING TOWARDS 2050
Decarbonising aviation in particular will remain crucial to decarbonising business travel by 2050. The figure below shows a range of different pathways that aviation might achieve net zero by 2050. It shows scenarios outlined by IATA, ICAO, the International Council on Clean Transportation and the Air Transport Action Group.
Net-zero transition: multiple levers in different combinations Source: IATA
American Express Global Business Travel’s head of sustainability, Nora Lovell Marchant, says the figures reveal that “the low-hanging fruit is basically gone” but that sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), shown in green, is a major part of all these scenarios.
Operations (shown in yellow), such as using greener flight paths, and tech (in blue), like more fuel-efficient planes, make up another significant part of the emission reductions.
Carbon removal and market-based measures (light grey), such as carbon pricing in Europe’s Emissions Trading Scheme, are also important in many of the scenarios. Other scenarios leave residual emissions (in dark grey) – carbon emissions that cannot be removed by other methods – that need to be offset in some other way.
CONTROLLING DEMAND
Many of the scenarios include a purple bar denoting demand impact or reduction – ie reducing the demand for business travel.
Will fewer business trips part of the solution? Our survey showed that 46 per cent of travel managers are promoting the use of virtual meeting tools instead of face-to-face travel, although few if any companies are mandating this.
Katharina Riederer, co-founder of eco.mio, says: “Obviously it's the best solution not to travel but the difficulty in our industry is that this industry exists because of travel, so reducing travel... no one really wants to push that. Also, when I do my booking, I have already decided that I have to travel and I have already got the approval.”
Nora Lovell Marchant says the pandemic showed that meetings could move to Zoom. “Now aviation traffic is growing because people know the value of business trips and putting people in front of people,” she says. “Are there some business trips that can and should be replaced with Zoom? Absolutely, but is there some business travel that will remain imperative forever? Absolutely.”
She continues: “We need to think about how to decarbonise that... because even the most liberal non-profit organisations recognise that other types of solutions besides demand management alone will be needed in order to decarbonise aviation.”
Benjamin Park, head of travel and sustainability at Parexel, expects sustainability in business travel to become more data-driven, with increased transparency and accountability. “Emissions methodologies will evolve, and corporates will need to adopt more granular tracking and reporting,” he says.
Park also believes that employee and customer expectations will increasingly influence corporate travel programmes. “For roles requiring travel, the maturity of a company’s sustainable travel strategy may become a differentiator in talent attraction and retention,” he says.
Park adds: “While cost management remains important, we are seeing a shift toward ‘purposeful travel’ where the value of each trip is weighed against its environmental impact. This mindset helps us reduce unnecessary travel while preserving essential face-to-face patient and customer engagement.”
As Advito’s senior director of sustainability Julien Etchanchu says, in spite of delays to the full roll-out of CSRD, “at some point, we will have to travel less not just because of the environment but because at some point there will be an energy crisis.”
Could unbridled aviation growth be managed through taxes and fees that are reinvested in the industry’s pursuit of net zero? “One per cent of people on Earth are responsible for 50 per cent of aviation emissions. People want to travel. At the moment, someone travelling once every ten years is taxed in the same way as a business traveller travelling 20 times a year.
“The problem is you don’t pay for the pollution you make – that is the ultimate issue. You could imagine a frequent flyer levy where the first trip is free of tax, the second you start to increase it a bit and by trip ten you are highly taxed and ever more highly in business class. The pressure for levies will grow,” warns Etchanchu.
With only 25 years to go until 2050, the aviation industry – and wider business travel sector – is running out of time to decarbonise. While plans, policies and ideas are rife, now is the time for action.
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