THE GREEN ROUTES

Wistful memories of smog-free skies during the pandemic mean dirty diesel cabs and other less green forms of transport are under the sustainability spotlight.

Electric and hydrogen powered vehicles have now joined train travel as the preferred modes of transport by many corporates, with the pandemic seeming to have accelerated this trend.

There are now more than 1,500 companies signed up to the Science Based Targets carbon reduction initiative, a pledge to reduce emissions to a level required to keep global warming to 1.5-2C below pre-industrial levels. The pressure is from corporates, with, for example, EY declaring net zero ambitions by 2025.

Buyers are responding; a BTN survey in early 2021 found 70.7 per cent of travel managers “personally concerned” about their company’s carbon footprint and 31 per cent tasked with seeking sustainability-orientated suppliers.

ITM chief executive Scott Davies said sustainability was “definitely an area being covered in ground transport supplier RFPs”.

“It’s no longer a box-ticking exercise. Corporates need to see evidence that providers are walking the walk and adopting sustainable business practices,” he says.

It’s a view echoed by TMCs. Click Travel’s operations director Chris Vince said sustainability “is absolutely key and a buzzword”.

Vince said Click helped by “behavioural nudging” on booking tools with pop-ups advising lower carbon alternatives that bore the corporate’s own branding.

He also accepts Covid has changed travel patterns but cautions about a wholesale move such as “suddenly making a shift to doing Scotland to London by train in a day or overnight instead of flying. It’s just time and money. It’s a very delicate balance.”

Trains were accepted as the eco-alternative to flying pre-Covid – and now we are emerging from the pandemic just as electric road vehicle use seems to be reaching a pivotal point.

Vince has noticed a definite shift towards electric and hybrid car hire. “More and more we are seeing requests for hotels with electric charging points,” he said.

However, Davies says there remained a supply issue.

Enterprise began trialling 17 hydrogen-fuelled Toyotas with corporate customers in May and has put 20 electric Renault hatchbacks into its Scottish fleet. Nevertheless, its website currently lists only one electric car option – a premium Tesla or similar – among 12 saloon categories.

Davies highlights another problem: “There are major concerns among travel managers and travellers about the readiness of the charging network.”

While infrastructure is built, offsetting of conventional vehicle use remains an alternative.

Chauffeur company Blacklane provides emissions reporting data to corporates, but stresses offsetting is not the full solution.

“There’s also the local emissions to consider,” said Sascha Meskendahl, Blacklane’s chief revenue officer, another who highlighted a change post-pandemic.

“One of the positive things to come out of the Covid crisis is the creation of more awareness of travel’s impact and that it shouldn’t go back to normal. Our motivation is to make that intrinsic.

“Historically, some corporates were asking for sustainability reporting, but we are seeing more and more companies looking at this now.”

He said demand for electric vehicles was being met in key locations “and corporates are jumping on that” but added only 10 per cent of its European fleet was electric. Availability of electric cars and their range were limiting factors, although hybrids provided a fallback.

Blacklane’s target is for half its journeys to be electric by the end of 2022 and it already offsets emissions from both fossil fuel and electric vehicles.

Free Now, the ride-hailing service that offers black cabs and private hire vehicles, aims to offer an electric option to every client.

Jason Dunderdale, head of B2B sales, said around 95 per cent of requests were met and corporates were onboard with the green transport revolution.

"People are genuinely asking for it. Especially since Covid, corporates are consolidating their programmes and sustainability has become more of a deciding factor. Nine out of 10 request that; it’s very present in all RFPs."

Free Now offers CO2 reporting and offsetting and is working towards making this visible to travellers via its app. Dunderdale admitted emissions reporting “will never be 100 per cent accurate” but added: “I think there will be standardisation across the industry as it gets more and more important in reporting.”

Free Now uses data including engine size, make, model, weight and miles driven to compile emissions figures, but as Dunderdale says, there exists no common standard regarding emissions, especially for electric vehicles once the source of their power is considered.

Another major factor is car energy usage in any form depends on how and where it is driven. Moreover, manufacturers’ own fuel consumption figures have been proved at best optimistic and not a reliable base for calculations.

Vince puts it succinctly: “Emissions data is only as good as the source it comes from.”

The travel industry needs the tools to do the job, but Darryl McGarvey, SAP Concur’s director of channel development, echoed the difficulties in accurate measuring.

McGarvey said Concur “was always looking for functionality” and would add a ground transport emissions calculator when it was feasible but could give no timescale.

“As soon as there are standards available for ground transport and a way of bringing reporting options into the tool, absolutely. It’s an evolving story,” he said.

“The challenge with any tool calculating carbon is you need to know what kind of car it is. It is very difficult to standardise reporting; if you are sat in traffic, you are still emitting – and then there are some drivers that hare around.”

McGarvey added that a comprehensive formula for electric vehicles needed to be derived “because electricity has to come from somewhere”.

Meanwhile, he said existing tools could still help by highlighting hire companies with electric or hybrid vehicles in their fleet and reminding staff what policy was.

McGarvey is also of the belief corporates are aligning with employees’ desires to care for the planet by travelling sustainably – and perhaps travelling less often too.

However, a final word from sustainable business travel consultant Horst Bayer is food for thought. He points out some companies “emit more carbon from employee commuting than from air travel on business”. That’s another issue to consider and one which, in the new post-Covid working from home world, will also be under the sustainability spotlight.