How to calculate carbon offset costs for business travel

Do you need to work out the cost of offsetting your business travel? Do you know how to calculate carbon emissions on flights? Do you know how to go about paying for carbon credits? If so, this article may be of use to you.

To offset your business travel carbon emissions there are five steps you need to take. First, you need to measure the amount of carbon used on each business trip. Second, you need to choose which projects you want to benefit from the carbon credits you purchase. Next, you need to calculate the monetary cost of the carbon you have used. You then need to settle – pay for – the carbon credits calculated in the previous stage. And finally, you have to receive the certification that demonstrates you have bought the carbon credits.

Measure carbon

You need to be able to calculate how much carbon you are expending on each business trip.

We use industry-defined methodology to determine the total carbon cost of business journeys you take and provide you with a figure expressed in kilograms of carbon for each trip. We can report that to you at the time of booking each trip, or on a monthly or quarterly basis, for all of the trips made by your organisation’s travellers.

Choose projects

You need to decide which sustainable projects you would like to support with your purchase of carbon credits.

There are projects in the UK and around the world you can choose to support. Each project has a different “cost” for carbon credits, which fluctuates based on its demand and on the amount of carbon reduction generated by each project.

We have selected a range of projects from which to choose, including a project decomposing farm animal manure to make biogas for domestic heating, a sanctuary providing a home to more than 950 wildlife species and a project that uses ceramic water filters to provide clean water to more than a million people.

Calculate cost

You need to calculate the cost of the carbon credits you need to buy, to offset the carbon used on your business travel, depending on the project(s) you have chosen.

We automatically calculate the sterling value of the carbon credits needed to offset the carbon emissions from your business travel. This calculation takes into account the project or projects chosen.

This calculation can be used, over time, to demonstrate how much your organisation’s carbon emissions have increased or decreased over time.

Settle credits

To offset the cost of your carbon emissions, you need to pay the calculated sterling cost of the credits required.

The payment for the carbon credits is made and used to develop the projects you have chosen – we can arrange to pay the monetary cost for you and invoice you after these credits are settled on your behalf.

Receive certification

You should ensure you can demonstrate that you have purchased the appropriate carbon credits by receiving certificates.

We can provide you with certificates that cover all of the carbon credits you have settled. These certificates are regularly retired, so you know they cannot be sold on by other parties. W