European businesses demand that their business travel be conducted sustainably
BT4Europe, the European Network of Business Travel Associations), today launched a Position Paper on Sustainability in Business Travel, demanding that business travel be conducted sustainably and arguing that information and self-awareness of the carbon impact of business travel are the drivers of change.
The business travel industry, with millions of Europeans traveling on business every year, sustains thousands of jobs across Europe and is vital to our economies and our societies. It is convinced it must reduce its carbon footprint in line with the European Green Deal.
The position paper highlights the fact that to properly tackle the challenge of greening business travel buyers of business travel in Europe first need to be fully informed about the amount of CO2 emissions caused by business travel, which is currently not possible.
The paper calls for urgent and significant steps to be taken to improve access to standardized, accurate and comparable data on the CO2 impact of business travel.
‘We have identified a set of common data challenges, which if not addressed and legislated upon where necessary, will prejudice the green transformation of the sector. To green our industry we must plug the data gaps and end the data inconsistencies. For example it is difficult to evaluate the real CO2 footprint for different travel options.’ Says Patrick W. Diemer, Chair of BT4Europe.
‘To green business travel – all stakeholder – business, citizens and the European Union must work together to ensure the CO2 footprint of business travel options become as important as price, customers have a right to CO2 information and we agree a unified standard for CO2 emission calculations. Therefore, the opportunities to act, created by the European Commission’s “CountEmissions EU” initiative and the on-going revisions of the Corporate Social Responsibility Directive and the Non-Financial Reporting Directive must be seized.’ says Angela Lille, Chair of the BT4Europe Working Group on Sustainability.