Why we monitor our travel emissions (and why everyone else should too)
The way we travel for work has a huge impact on climate change. Corporate travellers in Europe comprised 12% of customers, but were responsible for 30% of emissions in 2022, according to Transport & Environment. Every organisation should account for its travel emissions – and as an environmental NGO, reporting on this is integral to our values.
This year, we have started to put this theory into practice. But let’s be clear from the start – while we are fully committed to reporting on our travel emissions, this has been no simple task. As a small organisation, we don’t have the resources to pay a third party to calculate our travel emissions. So, in tackling it ourselves, we’ve spent a lot of time scratching our heads and considering the best approach. Read on to follow our journey so far.
What methodology did we use to calculate our travel emissions?
To get started, we chose to concentrate on our international air, sea, and rail travel.
The GHG Protocol outlines a decision tree to help calculate these travel emissions according to three methods:
1. Fuel-based – Determines the amount of fuel consumed during business travel (i.e., scope 1 and scope 2 emissions of transport providers) and applies the appropriate emission factor for that fuel.
2. Distance-based – Determines the distance and mode of business trips, then applies the appropriate emission factor for the mode used.
3. Spend-based – Determines the amount of money spent on each mode of business travel transport and applies secondary (environmentally-extended input output or EEIO) emission factors.
At Opportunity Green, we selected the distance-based accounting of emissions, as this is the most widely-used method in most of the emissions monitoring tools we encountered in our research. The following calculators were selected, for their suitability to our selected modes of transport; reliability of data; and ease of use:
Air – The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)’s Carbon Emissions Calculator*.
Rail – All our international rail travel for this period was via Eurostar, so we have used the emissions calculations on the Eurostar sustainability website (which gave higher CO2 emission results than our other alternative, Eco Passenger, as suggested by the booking system Rail Europe).
Ferry – UK Government Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2021, as illustrated by Thrust Carbon.
*Unfortunately, this calculator does not include ‘non-C02’ aviation emissions such as nitrous oxides (NOx), sulphur dioxide (SO2), water (H2O), and particulate matter (soot). ICAO explains that this is because the scientific community has not yet reached a consensus on the use of the non-CO2 multipliers. We are fully aware that this is unsatisfactory. Therefore, we have elected to use the non-CO2 multiplier method as suggested by the UK Government, and multiply the ICAO figure by 1.9, whilst acknowledging that the actual figure may be greater.
What type of travel was included?
We have included any international travel that is taken on behalf of Opportunity Green. This includes conferences, external events, training held at a third-party offices, interviews, and external meetings.
In this accounting, we did not include the travel towards the starting point of the international travel. For example, if an employee takes the tube to Heathrow Airport, we account for the emissions of the international travel – the flight, departing from Heathrow – but not those of the domestic travel – the tube journey to Heathrow Airport. This is solely due to current capacity, rather than a conscious disregard of domestic emissions.
Opportunity Green’s travel CO2 emissions
The following chart shows our international travel CO2 emissions from June 2022 to March 2023 inclusive.
How we plan to improve our calculations in future
It’s our aim to expand emissions monitoring and reporting for all domestic and international travel taken by members of staff for work purposes. It is also our goal to include all GHG emissions rather than solely CO2 emissions, as the latter alone does not truly reflect the impact of our organisation’s travels on global climate change.
We will also seek to adopt one single emissions accounting framework for all modes of transport, to ensure harmonisation of data across all travel.
We’ve included this data in our recent annual report, and we’ll continue to ensure this is an integral part of every annual report in future.
There are many different sources of travel emissions, and we acknowledge that this is a work in progress. But we’re hopeful that in the coming years, we will have a process in place to account for all work-based travel emissions.
We are keen to hear how others are tackling this and would love to hear from others on the challenges and successes you’ve had in your organisation. Please get in touch if you have any advice or suggestions that we could learn from.
