Carbon accounting - it’s not just about you. It’s about your suppliers too.

Jenna Brown, Director of Uber for Business UK

Communicating a company’s green credentials used to be seen as a job for the PR team. This is no longer true. Businesses cannot “greenwash” their way to an environmentally friendly reputation any more – robust reporting of sustainable practices to customers, investors and regulators is a must. Specifically, the measurement and reporting of carbon emissions, or “carbon accounting” has become a fundamental element of business reporting.

Carbon accounting involves all departments of an organisation but also extends to its suppliers. As well as reporting on emissions from heating, IT and company-owned vehicles, you will need to report on those which are not generated directly by your organisation. These are classed as Scope 3 emissions and relate to services that could range from the supply of materials for manufacturing through to activities such as employee travel. But how do you access this information? If you are hiring cars or using taxis for your employees, for example, do you know how you can lay your hands on that data in order to fulfil your reporting obligations?

It’s important to bear in mind that regulations are still becoming stricter when it comes to sustainability reporting. Ten years ago, providing information about a company’s sustainability was an optional extra. Now it is standard for many companies and mandatory for some. As the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive comes into force, more companies in the EU will be obliged to do the same. Similar regulations are in the process of being introduced in the UK. Sustainability reporting standards (SRS) could become mandatory for UK companies by the end of the year. Meanwhile in the US, although legislation is lighter, organisations that wish to do business globally still need to demonstrate that they are working to reduce their impact on the environment.

The likelihood is that reporting requirements will increase. In order to gather the necessary information for reporting, many larger organisations are already putting in place clauses in contracts with suppliers that require detailed breakdowns of carbon data. Alongside this, suppliers are also under pressure to ensure that they are working to reduce their own carbon footprint. For example, some suppliers to the NHS are already required to present carbon reduction plans. Such measures might include making a commitment to switch to sustainable transport solutions, such as electric vehicles, or adopting closed loop manufacturing methods that increase the recycling of waste materials.

Our own area of expertise is business travel, which is on the rise. For the first time since the pandemic, global business travel is likely to surpass levels last seen in 2019 – when $1.34 trillion was spent. This equates to well over 1 billion business trips being taken annually. That’s a lot of air miles, and a whole load of taxi trips to and from hotels and restaurants.

In spite of the great strides forward in video conferencing, business travel is inevitable. Site visits may be necessary for quality control or compliance reasons, or a customer may request a visit to a reference location, for example. Face-to-face meetings are often essential in order to establish a relationship of trust - whether that’s with customers, partners or employees. The imperative is to ensure that measures are being taken to reduce the impact of that travel, and that means choosing the right travel partners.

At Uber for Business, as a Scope 3 supplier of businesses in over 70 countries, we’ve re-focused our approach to sustainability. We began with our own carbon footprint, reducing the emissions of all of our fleets. In London, for example, 30% of Uber’s miles are now completed in zero-emission vehicles - and we’re planning to grow these outside the capital too. We’re also promoting the use of our Uber Green service as a travel option for corporate travellers. This enables them to request zero emission vehicles - and pay no more than they would for a ride in a standard Uber X vehicle. We have set ourselves a long-term goal of achieving fully zero-emission rides globally by 2040.

Secondly, we upgraded our reporting capabilities so that we could provide our corporate customers with the data they need for their carbon reporting. The result has been a dashboard that gives companies the ability to track, report, and act on their ground transportation carbon emissions. This provides metrics including total CO2 emissions and the percentage of rides taken in low-emission vehicles.

Suppliers to large corporations everywhere have had to up their game. As business understanding of the new regulations grows, more third party providers will add carbon reporting capabilities to their services. In the meantime, larger companies need to choose their partners with care - and make sure that providing carbon data is written into every contract.

Jenna Brown, Director of Uber for Business UK