University of Southampton Business Travel Emissions: analysis of Clarity travel booking data from 2017/18 to 1st March 2022

Abstract

This report used business travel emissions data as captured by the Clarity travel management system to analyse University of Southampton Business Travel emissions from 2018/19 to 1st March 2022. Clarity estimates emissions for flights, rail and hotel bookings but does not currently estimate emissions for car hire, taxi or ferry bookings nor for externally or self-funded travel. In addition the CO2e conversion factors used do not currently include Well-To-Tank emissions.

The analysis in this report uses 2018/19 as a ‘baseline’ year since it was the last pre-COVID academic year. 2019/20 was unaffected by COVID until March 2020 but the remaining months of the academic year to July 2020 were heavily affected as the data analysis shows.

Based on the Clarity data to date, the University’s business travel emissions totals since the 2017/18 academic year were:

1. 2018/19: 8,361 T CO2e (~ 6% of our estimated total of ~ 129,000 T CO2e Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions – see (Ben Anderson 2021a))

2. 2019/20: 5,339 T CO2e

3. 2020/21: 58 T CO2e (less than 1% of 2018/19)

4. 2021/22 (to February 2022): 747 T CO2e

The overwhelming majority of these emissions derive from flights (97.5% of total in 2018/19) and especially long haul (65%) or international flights (18%). Business class flights accounted for 15% of emissions in 2019/20 and 2021/20 but perhaps concerningly comprise 23% of emissions in 2021/22 to date. Had these flights been Economy class, our emissions would have been ~10% lower in each year.

The majority of trips (and the greatest emissions) are coded to ‘Conference’ and ‘Business Meeting’ with ‘Research’ and ‘Fieldwork’ only featuring more strongly during 2020/21.

As we would expect, travel frequency and emissions per traveller are highly skewed. Some travellers make over 80 trips a year but the median is just 2. The mean emissions per traveller was 1.62 T CO2e in 2018/19 but the median was 0.33 and the maximum 133 T for the highest emitting individual traveller. As a result, some 5-6% of travellers in each year are responsible for ~50% of business travel emissions and around 20% are responsible for ~80%.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Ben Anderson: orcid.org/0000-0003-2092-4406

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