A matter of urgency

“Doing something is always better than doing nothing,” American Express Global Business Travel sustainability SVP Nora Lovell Marchant told a BTN webinar audience last summer. “The United Nations doesn’t have the power politically to wave a magic wand to say ‘these are global carbon standards.’ If we are all waiting for something like that to happen, we can kiss the goals of the Paris Agreement goodbye.”

Marchant was referring to the climate change agreement of 2015 in which world leaders pledged to cut their respective countries’ greenhouse gas emissions to try to prevent global temperatures rising by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius – the level that climate scientists estimate would be a breaking point above which the planet would sustain irreversible damage.

In lieu of global carbon standards or shared strategies, governments are applying a number of approaches to induce their societies – including industries – to reduce their environmental impact.

The European Union has been aggressive on the regulatory front with its broad-based Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), rolling out in phases over the next few years, beginning in 2025, to include more and smaller companies as the phases progress. It includes business travel emissions as a single line item, scope 3.6, and employee commuting as another, scope 3.7 – both lifted from the GHG Protocol which set out the world’s most widely used greenhouse gas accounting standards.

The US, as well, has taken regulatory action, though it’s been subject to numerous delays. The Securities and Exchange Commission in March adopted rules that standardise climate-related disclosures in reporting by public companies; however, this is currently restricted to scope 1 and 2 emissions. While previous proposals included reporting requirements for scope 3 emissions, the final rule has been criticised for its “watered down” approach.

California has stepped into the gap. The state’s Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act also mandates GHG emissions and climate risk disclosures – including scope 1 and 2 emissions from 2026 and scope 3 from 2027.

Addressing greenhouse gas emissions isn’t all about regulatory requirements; indeed, reporting on emissions data doesn’t necessarily translate into taking action. That said, many companies have pledged to do so, and voluntarily have submitted plans to the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) regarding the actions they will take to achieve net-zero operations by a certain date.