American Express Global Business Travel (Amex GBT) has announced a new agreement with
climate technology company, CHOOOSE to integrate its carbon emissions calculations into
Amex GBT’s travel booking and reporting tools.
The aim of the agreement is to enhance Amex GBT’s sustainability solutions by increasing the
precision and consistency of greenhouse gas emissions data and to build architecture for future
carbon compensation.
Amex GBT displays carbon emission data in its online booking tool, Neo, to help travellers make
educated, sustainable decisions. The integration will replace current calculation mechanisms
used in Neo with seamlessly integrated emissions calculations from CHOOOSE.
Mark McSpadden, Amex GBT’s VP of product strategy and user experience, said: “Flights
are the single largest contributor to business travel emissions, so our first priority is to help our
clients keep up with evolving standards for calculating aviation emissions. We are integrating
solutions that give clients more choice, enhance our tools with more granular CO2 calculations,
and allow us to serve up robust, consistent CO2 data across our suite of booking, tracking and
reporting tools. This helps educate travellers and drive real progress in sustainable travel.”
The new solution will let travel managers select a preferred calculation methodology and
seamlessly apply that preference across online booking, mobile app, and itinerary solutions. In
Amex GBT reporting tools, travel managers will be able to apply CHOOOSE-powered emissions
calculations to trips booked since 2019 for tracking, analyzing and managing carbon footprints.
With the integration, travellers will see consistent trip emissions values in the search results,
itineraries, and in the Amex GBT Mobile app for past and future trips. This will provide more
visibility into the travellers’ individual carbon footprint, helping them better understand the
environmental impact of travel and influence their booking behaviour.
Integrating with CHOOOSE gives Amex GBT access to industry-accepted air emissions
methodologies.
For example, these include ICAO, UK BEIS, US EPA and France ADEME.
Amex GBT also integrates with additional data sources such as IATA CO2 Connect based on
IATA RECOMMENDED PRACTICE-RP 1726. This will give clients the flexibility to include more
criteria such as distance, fuel burn, occupancy, cabin class, and belly cargo for a high degree of
accuracy. In addition, where applicable by methodology, customers can select their preferences
on radiative forcing and well-to-wake, which is critical for measuring the benefits of sustainable
aviation fuel (SAF). Emissions data for additional travel segments such as rail, car, and hotel will
follow. Additional methodologies and features/enhancements will be available over time.
The integration with CHOOOSE is an important step in building the architecture for additional
carbon compensation solutions across the Amex GBT portfolio of products and services. Amex
GBT clients will have options to compensate for their business travel emissions via a diverse
portfolio of climate solutions, integrated seamlessly into their booking and reporting tools. For
example, these will include carbon offsets and insets, carbon removals, and emerging
decarbonization solutions. CHOOOSE data will also support sustainable meeting and events
(M&E) solutions providing a consistent client experience with reliable data across Amex GBT’s
services. Egencia will also integrate certain CHOOOSE-powered emissions calculations into its
business travel platform, including its reporting tool.
CHOOOSE CEO and founder Andreas Slettvoll said:
“We are very happy to support Amex GBT – and the millions of travellers they serve – in creating an industry-leading set of tools to track, understand, and address the carbon footprint associated with business travel. Together, we are taking an end-to-end approach with a deep focus on delivering calculation methodologies in line with the latest industry guidance and seamless access to both
immediately available and frontier climate solutions.”
CHOOOSE is also working with British Airways, which is launching an upgraded climate
software solution for individual and corporate travellers to help them understand, calculate and
address their travel emissions. BA’s CO₂llaborate programme in partnership with CHOOOSE
enables customers to calculate their carbon emissions and make environmentally conscious
decisions to reduce their impact on the environment when they fly. For some time, British
Airways customers have been able to mitigate their emissions from flying by using the airline’s
carbon offsetting tool to purchase high-quality carbon offsets and sustainable aviation fuel.
CO₂llaborate is an evolution of this carbon offsetting tool, featuring more precise emissions
calculations and a new adjustable slider to give customers more control over the amount of
sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) versus verified carbon offsets they wish to purchase.
