LONDON, UK — American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) is doubling down on its sustainability goals with a new agreement with climate tech company CHOOOSE.
The agreement will integrate CHOOSE’s carbon emissions calculations across Amex GBT’s travel booking and reporting tools, with the aim of enhancing Amex GBT’s sustainability solutions by increasing the precision of greenhouse gas emissions data and building a framework for future carbon compensation.
“Flights are the single largest contributor to business travel emissions, so our first priority is to help our clients keep up with evolving standards for calculating aviation emissions,” said Mark McSpadden, Amex GBT’s VP of product strategy and user experience.
“We are integrating solutions that give clients more choice, enhance our tools with more granular CO2 calculations, and allow us to serve up robust, consistent CO2 data across our suite of booking, tracking and reporting tools. This helps educate travellers and drive real progress in sustainable travel,” he added.
Canada is ranked 10th in the world for total greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and has the highest GHG emissions rate per capita from the top 10 emitting countries and regions, according to government data.
Air Canada has also partnered with CHOOOSE when the company debuted its new carbon offset program in September 2022.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
Amex GBT displays carbon emission data in its online booking tool, Neo, to help travellers made more sustainable decisions. The integration will replace current calculation mechanisms used in Neo with CHOOOSE’s integrated emissions calculations.
The new solution will let travel managers select a preferred calculation methodology and seamlessly apply that preference across online booking, mobile app and itinerary solutions. In Amex GBT’s reporting tools, travel managers will be able to apply CHOOOSE-powered emissions calculations to trips booked since 2019 for tracking, analyzing and managing carbon footprints.
With the integration, travellers will see consistent trip emissions values in their search results, itineraries and in the Amex GBT mobile app for past and future trips. This will help them better understand the environmental impact of their travels and influence their booking behaviour.
TECHNOLOGY & CARBON COMPENSATION
According to Amex GBT, integrating with CHOOOSE gives the company access to industry-accepted air emissions methodologies, including ICAO, UK BEIS, US EPA and France ADEME. This will give clients the flexibility to include more criteria such as distance, fuel burn, occupancy, cabin class and belly cargo for a high degree of accuracy. In addition, customers can select their preferences on radiative forcing and well-to-wake, which is critical for measuring the benefits of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). Emissions data for additional travel segments such as rail, car and hotel will follow.
The integration will also help build the architecture for additional carbon compensation solutions across the Amex GBT portfolio of products and services. Clients will have options to compensate for their business travel emissions via a portfolio of climate solutions, integrated seamlessly into their booking and reporting tools. For example, these will include carbon offsets and insets, carbon removals and emerging decarbonization solutions.
CHOOOSE data will also support sustainable meeting and events solutions. Plus, Egencia will integrate certain CHOOOSE-powered emissions calculations into its business travel platform, including its reporting tool.
