The topic of sustainability in corporate mobility is broad, extremely important and, unfortunately, is still treated by many companies as it was at the beginning of the millennium. In particular, the CO2 emissions caused by air travel are repeatedly classified as especially harmful by climate protectors.
To avoid misunderstandings: offsetting climate-damaging emissions is an important component in achieving the sustainability goals, as it releases capital in line with the polluter in order to build up long-term climate protection and, depending on the type of compensation, offers a form of climate justice that makes it possible to take effect in regions that are suffering from climate change, but did not significantly cause it.
In view of the global task of reducing global warming to 1.5 degrees in accordance with the Paris Climate Agreement, however, this instrument is hardly helpful – the time lag between the emission of climate-damaging gases and the effectiveness of the compensation measure is too long, and does not take effect before the so-called irreversible tipping points that threaten us if we do not quickly find effective solutions.
Anyone who thinks that the problem has been resolved thanks to the COVID-19 restrictions and currently does not require any attention is wrong. On the contrary, it is an important time to take those measures at a standstill that are more difficult to implement during operation. Business trips will take place again – even if there is hope that the switch to online meetings will make at least part of the business travel volume obsolete in the future.
In fact, meetings, events, and trade fairs – in short, all kinds of gatherings – are the main reason for business trips and should therefore be the focus of sustainability efforts. Mobility and accommodation make up 85% of the CO2 footprint of events (Source: atmosfair) – only those who manage to optimize these areas at the planning stage can justifiably claim to organize sustainably.
For this purpose, new planning tools are required that enable the organizer to project the mobility of the participants so that travel behavior can be compared and controlled through intelligent selection of place and time in such a way that unnecessary emissions of climate-damaging gases can be avoided during travel and accommodation.
According to long-term case studies, an average of 40% of the CO2 emissions per meeting can be avoided without loss of quality for the participants – because their travel preferences and guidelines can be taken into account in the operational environment.
This creates multiple benefits for companies – in addition to reducing carbon dioxide emissions during travel processes, the meeting place and time can also be selected according to travel costs and travel productivity, which enables an ecological and economic balance.
In sum, the dogma for the operational post-COVID travel era applies:
Avoidance through web meetings
Reduce with intelligent tools like the Meeting Place Finder
Compensation for the remaining quantities
