We won’t say the ‘P’’ word, but in 2020 the world was, of course, halted on travel. At the peak of lockdown there was an approximated 75% drop in aviation emissions. Despite business travel not booming back as quickly as leisure travel, we’re virtually Zoom-ing less in favour of zooming off to in-person meetings more. But now we’re back on the move, it’s crucial that our return to business as usual doesn’t cost the planet a resurgence in huge carbon footprints. It’s not cool.
Company travel is carbon-hungry business
The UN estimated that by 2050, aviation carbon could be using 25% of the global emissions budget needed to stay below the1.5ºC global warming increase. If temperatures rise beyond this critical threshold, we’re all in big trouble. And guess what? Business travel plays a huge role in this, making up an estimated 15-20% of all global travel.
This isn’t limited to your flights – we’re on a mission to get on track to beat travel carbon emissions. Although trains and coaches are less impactful, they’re also carbon-culprits. However, if you switch to travelling by train instead of a car for a medium-length distance, you could cut your carbon footprint by around 80%. Catching the rail instead of a domestic flight, even better at around 84% emissions reduction.
It’s not just about the mileage
Business travel tends to have a larger footprint – not just due to frequency of jet setting. Business-class seats drive up to four times as much carbon as economy seats – this is because they take up increased space, weight, and are more likely to end up empty. Also, size matters when it comes to air travel – both very small jets and large aircrafts with four engines use much more fuel than typical twin-aisle aircrafts.
Where you set up camp for the night also impacts your travel carbon footprint (we’re not suggesting you pitch a tent up, unless you really want to). Hotels use high amounts of energy and can be operationally wasteful – scope 1 and 2 emissions for a hotel room per night can be up to 15 tonnes of CO2 per year. But we calculate that for you too, cos we’re all about the details.
A quick recap on emissions
If you missed our last newsletter (subscribe below so that doesn’t happen again btw), you’ll have missed our breakdown on what scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions mean. Scope 1 is a company’s direct emissions, scope 2 is indirect energy emissions, and scope 3 is all other associated emissions.
Don’t worry, COCO+’s got you covered
For a business travel company, we’ve hit you with a lot of hard stats about why business travel can be bad news. But it’s because we get you; we love seeing our team and business partners IRL too (team drinks are probably our favourite part of the week). But we also get the climate crisis and we’re all about facts – our mission is to disrupt business travel for the better.
We also know how busy the working day is. So you don’t need to spend anymore time, money or effort when it comes to booking your business travel in a sustainable way – we’ll sort your most eco-friendly business itinerary and offset+ all your accumulated carbon and no extra cost. We’ll help you track this by pulling together detailed reports which will support you in managing your costs and impact.
In total, we’ve offset 4,322 tonnes of carbon so far, and we need you to help us raise our total. So get on board and let’s get on the road to net zero together.
Want to learn more? Get in touch.