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Businesses large and small are keen to demonstrate their commitment to addressing climate change issues in order to win over staff and show a responsible face to customers as well as achieving financial savings and easing compliance with the Carbon Reduction Commitments. 

The Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) will apply mandatory emissions trading to cut carbon emissions from large commercial and public sector organisations including supermarkets, hotel chains, government departments and large local authority buildings by 1.1 MtC per year by 2020.

Touch challenge

One way in which businesses and organisations can to do this is by calculating the carbon footprint of their employees’ business expenses and business travel expenses.

In particular they should look at mileage, flights, taxis and hotel stays as these represent about half of all business expense claims.

According to data from the GlobalExpense Employee Expenses Benchmark Report 2008 in association with Carbon Statement, the CO2 generated by the average business traveller over a year is equivalent to boiling a kettle 105,413 times and would require the planting of six trees grown to maturity over 99 years to offset it.

Businesses that want to measure and reduce their carbon footprints, as many larger businesses are trying to do at present, face a tough challenge.

The environment and climate change minister, Ian Pearson, was recently reported as saying that he expects a company’s carbon statement to be as prominent as its financial statement in the future.

Business travellers 

You cannot measure and control what you do not understand, however, and many companies and organisations do not capture data on - or realise the true costs of - their own employees’ business travel.

Inaccurate, out-of-policy and fraudulent expense claims also distort the picture.

In order to assess the contribution to climate change from business travel by UK employees, GlobalExpense and Carbon Statement analysed in excess of 4.8 million individual expense claims from more than 100,000 business travellers to establish the CO2 emissions they generate.

The CO2 values are calculated by applying the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) greenhouse gas conversion factors for company reporting issued in June 2007.

The average expense-claiming business traveller’s carbon footprint for 2007 is about 6.2 tonnes of CO2 compared to 4.94 tonnes for other members of the public. 

This is equivalent to more than half of the average household’s CO2 emissions every year. Average household emissions (11.26 tonnes) include energy usage, appliances and the personal travel for 2.3 people.

Largest travel carbon footprint 

The average commuter driving an average car, covering the average commute distance will produce almost one tonne of CO2 per person per year. 

With 25 million people in the UK commuting, that is the CO2 emissions equivalent of filling almost 50 billion one litre water bottles.

The IT/Telecoms industry has the largest average travel carbon footprint per expense-claiming employee in 2007 at 9.41 tonnes for car, train, taxi and air travel as well as hotel accommodation. 

In fact IT/Telecoms industry business travellers were the biggest polluters in all categories with the exception of travelling by car.

That crown goes to expense-claiming business travellers in the media and publishing industry. 

Business travellers that claim expenses in the financial services industry had the second largest average carbon footprint per person for flights.

Oil and gas industry business travellers were responsible for the second largest carbon footprint from hotel accommodation.

Medium-sizes companies 

The financial services industry and media and publishing industry jointly had the second largest carbon footprint from travelling by taxi. 

Expense-claiming employees at medium-sized companies had the largest average travel carbon footprint from car travel at 3.38 tonnes per person, closely followed by small companies at 3.33 tonnes.

By comparison, employees at large companies contributed roughly half of this amount, 1.73 tonnes.

Medium-sized companies had the largest average travel carbon footprint per expense-claiming employee across car, train, taxi and air travel as well as hotel accommodation at 9.56 tonnes. 

Medium-sized company employees also had the largest average carbon footprint for flights.

The total carbon footprint in CO2 tonnes for UK employees undertaking business travel in 2007 (not including commuting to work) was 4,400,650 tonnes of CO2 with car travel accounting for 60 per cent. 

Flights accounted for 25 percent of carbon emissions generated by business travel.

Financial savings 

Employee travel expense data can be lost from the traditional carbon accounting process which focuses on waste production and energy use, but actually contributes substantially to its total.

Companies and organisations should take care to capture the details of all employee expenses reclaimed against the company for travel that any individual has booked and paid for themselves, such as train fares, taxi travel and mileage, as well as travel arrangements that may be booked through a preferred travel agency or in-house department.

This kind of business travel data capture, and more importantly, the analysis of that data, will result in financial savings for the company as employers and employees become more aware of the rules and regulations surrounding travel expense claims and out-of-policy, inaccurate and fraudulent expense claims are reduced.

As a result of analysing travel expense claims companies can make decisions about car sharing, whether to take the train or the plane, eliminating unnecessary journeys by introducing video conferencing and other initiatives aimed at cutting carbon emissions. 

Employees will also be encouraged to buy into the emissions cutting drive if they realise that their actions and choices have a direct bearing on the company or organisation’s carbon footprint.

It is only by gaining an understanding of the carbon footprint of individual business travellers that their employers can really get to grips with the carbon emissions they have generated as a company.

David Vine is managing director of GlobalExpense.

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Related links 

• GlobalExpense