Thrust Carbon methodologies achieve ISO assurance

Sustainability data specialist Thrust Carbon has become “the first and only” company to have a number of its methodologies assured under the ISO 14083 standard, which provides a carbon accounting standard for the travel industry.

Introduced in 2023, the ISO 14083 standard pertains to “the quantification and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions arising from transport chain operations”.

The European Commission has already adopted the standard for its forthcoming CountEmissionsEU initiative.

Thrust Carbon founder Kit Aspen believes the standard will also become a “seal of assurance” for the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), which mandates organisations disclose information pertaining to their social and environmental impact, including Scope 3.6 emissions from business travel.  

The ISO 14083 standard provides a comprehensive set of rules that make carbon calculations clear, understandable, and repeatable and, according to Thrust Carbon, will help overcome current inconsistencies surrounding the multiple methodologies used to calculate travel-related carbon emissions.

“For years, customers have been worried about which methodology is correct for their business since there has been no global standard for emissions reporting,” Aspen said.

“This landmark ISO assurance puts that to rest, since it is the first third-party global standard for travel methodologies, enabling companies to use leading carbon calculations with confidence.”

Aspen told BTN Europe the company is immediately assured for the following methodologies: The UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs’ (DEFRA) greenhouse gas conversion factors for air, car, rail and ferry-based emissions calculations; its flagship ICAO+ (based on the International Civil Aviation Organization’s (ICAO) Carbon Emissions Calculator with the addition of proprietary datasets) for air; more than 20 additional country-based calculations for rail (including calculations by UK Rail, SNCF, Eurostar, Deutsch Bahn and Amtrak); and the Cornell Hotel Sustainability Benchmarking Index for emissions related to hotel stays.

Aspen added that ISO assurance is “still an ongoing project” and that “we’re working with other methodologies also to arrange for them to be ISO assured within our system”.

He noted that in some cases there are “adjustments to the underlying methodology to make it ISO compatible”. For example, the ISO standard excludes some adjustments that DEFRA uses in its air methodology, so these are reverted when a client uses the ISO DEFRA version from Thrust Carbon. “However, we still have the standard DEFRA [calculation] available for customers that want that,” said Aspen.

In a statement, Thrust Carbon said the ISO 14083 assurance will give its clients confidence surrounding CSRD disclosure requirements and “ensures the $100bn of annual global travel spend touching its data is well-prepared for the evolving regulatory landscape”.

GBTA Foundation managing director and SVP for sustainability, Delphine Millot, has also recognised the company’s achievement.

“We applaud Thrust Carbon’s efforts to become an early adopter and encourage the rest of the travel industry to follow suit to pave the way for the much-needed harmonisation and comparability of the data displayed and reported,” she said.

Thrust Carbon was verified by LRQA, a global authority in standards assurance.