Paying the Freight for Polluting the Air: Europe Takes the Lead

In Europe, carbon emissions are regulated by the Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme, a mandatory cap-and-trade system that applies to major emitters. The plan is meant to meet Europe’s obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States did not sign. Compared with the emissions of a power station, those produced by corporate business travel are relatively small, and efforts to offset emissions are voluntary. In the future, however, the European plan will include more sectors of the economy.

But businesses stress that buying offsets without reducing the amount of travel will bring little net relief to the problem of climate change. At the same time, travel is often essential, particularly for service companies, many of whom anticipate more travel as they expand globally.
Despite a slow start in the early 1990’s, videoconferencing holds the greatest potential for reducing business travel. British Sky Broadcasting has invested in videoconferencing suites. At Ikea in Sweden, 1 of 10 meetings are being replaced by a videoconference. And Credit Suisse has increased it by 14 percent.

“The two things people have been waiting for, bandwidth and eye contact, are starting to become available,” said Paul Dickinson, the coordinator of the Carbon Disclosure Project, a London-based group of institutional investors that gathers data on emissions from the world’s 500 largest companies. “Videoconferencing can lead the way to reduced carbon business communications.”

With more European companies focusing on cutting emissions from business travel, the travel industry itself has begun to collaborate. In the United States, that trend has been slower to develop. Avis Europe, for example, offers clients the option to make a rental car carbon neutral through its Web site. Avis in the United States, which has different ownership, has no such plans to do so.

Europe’s airlines are the missing piece in the puzzle, and will probably remain so until later this fall, when the European Union Commission will decide on when and how they will be brought into the emissions trading plan. Meanwhile, some companies are beginning to ask airlines to share the costs of carbon neutrality.

NYT story available without registration at Climate Ark