Guest Blog - Sustainable business travel: good for the environment and good for business

The first step in understanding your organisation’s emissions is to measure its carbon footprint. Our experienced team of greenhouse gas accountants help companies measure and track their main sources of direct and indirect emissions. From there, you can identify target areas for future emissions reductions. Organisations can compensate for emissions from necessary business activities, such as work travel, by purchasing carbon credits. At South Pole, we have our five-step Climate Journey, which helps organisations measure, understand and take action to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, including selecting a portfolio of carbon projects that aligns with company values.

These days, more and more businesses are being asked by stakeholders "What are you doing to take action and address climate change?" This is coming from their shareholders, the investment community and customers. Minimising impact on the climate is no longer a nice-to-have, but a business imperative. Understanding and addressing your organisation’s carbon footprint is one concrete and measurable way to help lower global emissions, contribute to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and strengthen your business brand and reputation. On the flipside, not acting to address climate change is increasingly becoming a reputational risk for a company.

Great question. South Pole clients can choose to offset their remaining emissions by choosing carbon credits from a variety of projects — solar, wind, biomass, cookstoves, reforestation and forest protection, and so on — and from a variety of geographies, depending on their business location, values and preferences. For example, an Australian company can choose to offset emissions with carbon credits from projects located in Australia and the greater Asia-Pacific region. Another example is our client Signify — they support a portfolio of carbon projects aligning with their 'Brighter lives, better world' vision.

Carbon credits have a dual purpose. The robust monitoring, verification and reporting process that our projects go through ensures the emission reduction is real, measurable, permanent, additional, independently verified and unique. This is done by selecting carbon projects that meet international best-practice standards. A company can use these carbon credits to offset their emissions, indirectly supporting these great climate-friendly projects globally.

Secondly, the environmental and social co-benefits that carbon projects create alongside emission reductions are an investment multiplier and a great benefit to communities. By one estimate, for every carbon credit (1 tCO₂e) purchased from a forestry project, an additional US$242 is created through forest ecosystem services and jobs in agroforestry farming. South Pole's clients invest in a range of carbon projects that create a broad spectrum of additional benefits, including protecting and re-generation of forests, improving lives and livelihoods, generating new forms of renewable energy and converting agricultural waste into bioenergy. South Pole is proud that these projects are part of the CTM Climate+ Program.

 Each carbon credit represents the equivalent of one metric tonne of carbon dioxide (tCO₂e) being either avoided or removed from the atmosphere. High-quality carbon credits adhere to a strict set of standards. You can check this by ensuring the projects you invest in are registered with a third-party, internationally recognised verification standard, such as the Gold Standard, Verra's Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), or standards verified by the UNFCCC. As well as certifying the legitimacy of a project and its emissions reductions, these standards also help highlight different project co-benefits contributing towards the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

There has been consistent growth in the carbon market for the past five years, and demand remains high in 2020. Since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2016 — an historic milestone for global climate action — corporate and government buyers of carbon credits have become more sophisticated and interested in understanding the projects and communities they are investing in. As described above, we see clients being very specific in the types of credits that they wish to buy. This is a welcome change that allows the positive impacts of carbon projects to be more widely communicated.

Despite the global economic impact of COVID-19, we are still seeing tremendous progress in climate action through major corporate net zero announcements and industry working groups such as the ‘Transform to Net Zero’ alliance founded by A P. Moller – Maersk, Danone, Mercedes-Benz AG, Microsoft, Natura & Co, NIKE, Starbucks, Unilever, Wipro and the Environmental Defense Fund. Carbon markets remain strong, despite economic downturn — and that’s a big change from the carbon market crash that followed the 2007 global financial crisis.

South Pole is a signatory to the UN Global Compact and we provide a Sustainability Report annually to them. In addition, we publish an annual carbon emissions accounting report and we disclose which carbon projects we support. Our global carbon reporting is based on South Pole's climate neutral label criteria which aligns with international best-practice reporting standard PAS 2060, developed in 2014 by the British Standards Institution (BSi). The underlying greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting must follow recognised international standards such as the GHG Protocol and ISO 14064-1.

In addition to this, South Pole is a certified B Corporation in Australia and the United States, as well as a certified carbon neutral organisation in Australia under the Federal Government's Climate Active Standard.

Direct emissions are emissions from sources that are owned or controlled by the reporting entity (business). These include things like company vehicles and energy/heat generation at company facilities. Indirect emissions are emissions that are a consequence of the activities of the reporting entity, but occur at sources owned or controlled by another entity. Business travel — particularly flights — are often the largest single source of indirect emissions for office-based businesses (often making up 80% or more). Globally, aviation accounts for around 2% of annual emissions.

In late 2019 and early 2020, we saw major airlines leading the corporate climate action movement, with announcements from Qantas, British Airways, Air New Zealand, Etihad and Delta to name a few. Their commitments ranged from announcing carbon neutrality with 100% carbon offset flights, incentivising carbon offset flights via loyalty programs, and billion dollar carbon strategies. South Pole is supportive of all aviation climate action, and we work with several airlines to meet the soon-to-be mandatory industry carbon reduction targets under the CORSIA framework.

Hotels are large consumers of energy through lighting, heating and cooling, catering and linen washing facilities. The restaurants in hotels also have a carbon footprint in the supply of food and drinks. Hotels also create a lot of waste through the high turnover of guests and the need to have fully stocked, clean rooms.

South Pole has partnerships with Hilton and EarthCheck to work on clean and green conferencing and accommodation solutions. When booking accommodation, ask your hotel provider if they source renewable energy and have responsible consumption policies in place for the consumables used at their hotel.

During your stay, you can reduce emissions by:

• only using the lights in the areas of the room you are in and turning all lights off when you leave your room,
• switching off that TV that often turns itself on to greet you
• setting your heating/cooling to a mid-temperature that is comfortable (not the extreme hot or cold options)
• avoiding using the single-use disposable consumables available to you by bringing your own toiletries.