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Sustainable travel
STEPPING OFF THE GAS So, mixed messages – but what’s not obvious is to what extent people are aware of the differentials in CO2 emissions. For example, Eurostar says that on its London-Paris round-trips, its CO2 emissions work out at 6.6kg per passenger, against 102.8kg for a return flight between Luton and Paris Charles de Gaulle. Comparative figures for London-Brussels are 8.2kg by rail and 140.6kg by air. But what does a kilo of CO2 look like? The answer is that at normal atmospheric pressure, it’s about half a cubic metre. An Olympic-sized swimming pool has a minimum capacity of around 2,500 cubic metres, so it would hold 5,000kg of CO2, equivalent to nearly 760 Eurostar trips to Paris and back, but fewer than 50 return flights.
Quite what this means in terms of the environment – apart from “not good” – remains unclear but, if
(CWT) thinks future generations of travellers are likely to be more attuned to sustainable ways of working, and to virtual meetings in particular. “Virtual meetings will always be an option for those companies that have invested in the technology and whose business practice can be handled via remote connections,” says Sandy Moring, CWT senior director for market strategy, business services and sustainability. She says future business generations could potentially embrace virtual meetings more as it is part of their mindset, whereas at the moment “we’re in a crossover zone where we have long-established travellers in senior positions who still value highly the more traditional approach to doing business. The next generation coming through, with a completely different attitude and approach, could potentially be game-changing.” As companies and their employees become greener, Moring argues, so
With many major economies back on track, the panic has subsided, and travel’s environmentalists are once again being given a fair hearing
Airplus International’s latest report is to be believed, the price of ignoring travel emissions is going to be very high indeed. Its white paper, Business Travel
2060, paints an apocalyptic picture of a future in which nations go to war over water supplies; rising sea levels swamp roads and railways; and wildfires, extreme storms and higher winds could close ports and airports. “The environmental impact of pollution and emissions currently costs the global economy around US$4.7 trillion each year,” writes the report’s author, Mark Harris. “With the world’s fast-growing population, and rising incomes in emerging economies, demand for natural resources is on track to treble by 2050 – meaning that water and other critical raw materials for industry will be less available, and more expensive.”
VIRTUAL SOLUTIONS Not everyone subscribes to the doom-and-gloom scenario, however. Indeed, Carlson Wagonlit Travel
they will increasingly expect their suppliers to have followed suit. She says economic restraints mean that a travel management company’s (TMC) sustainability performance is “not yet a deal-breaker”, but as peer pressure and legislation initiates better performance on the sustainability agenda, more and more companies are committing to a strategy of best practice. “When companies are able to engage and support each other’s strategies, then you are definitely coming nearer to being in a deal- making position,” she says. If legislative and peer pressure does force more corporates to toe the eco-friendly line, is there an advisory role for TMCs? Moring believes there is, and that CWT – which recently became the first TMC in the world to achieve Gold Medal status under the Global Business Travel Association’s (GBTA) Project Icarus corporate social responsibility scheme – is leading by example. “We are proactively advocating sustainable travel practices and using our knowledge and position
PLANE TALKING
ENVIRONMENTAL ACTIVIST GROUP Greenpeace has called on the government to ban all UK mainland domestic flights and scrap its plans for airport expansion to force travellers to use greener rail services. “We don’t want to stop people from flying,” the
organisation insists. “We do want to prevent the number of flights from growing to dangerous levels – the growth in aviation is ruining our chances of stopping dangerous climate change. “To achieve this, companies like British Airways need to end their needless short-haul routes, and the government needs to ban all mainland domestic routes, where the train is an easy alternative. Most importantly, the government must end plans for airport expansion.” As usual, hard facts are hard to come by.
According to the Environmental Transport Association (ETA), just one return flight from London to New York produces a greater carbon footprint than a whole year’s personal allowance needed to keep the climate safe. “The average personal footprint in Britain is 9.5 tonnes,” the association says. “To get down to a ‘fair’ share of the world’s total, this must be cut by 87 per cent, leaving 1.2 tonnes. On every flight to New York and back, each traveller emits about 1.2 tonnes of CO2. If we fly, air travel overshadows all our other impacts.” On the opposing side, the Air Transport Action
Group (ATAG) says that aviation emissions, although increasing rapidly, represent only 2 per cent of the global total. In 2012, ATAG says, human-induced CO2 emissions added up to 34 billion tonnes, only 680 million tones of which came from aviation. Furthermore, it says, aviation accounts for
only 12 per cent of the emissions produced by all transport modes, with road transport accounting for 74 per cent of the total. Business travellers themselves seem
ambivalent on the subject – an Audiencenet survey conducted for the GTMC revealed that more than 80 per cent of the 1,000 frequent flyers questioned said issues such as sustainability did not affect the amount of international business travel undertaken by their organisations.
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