Introduction
A leading Fortune 500 financial data company set ambitious climate goals, and had significant financial implications tied to their sustainability metrics. The company needed a robust and defensible emissions reporting system for their global business travel program.
Challenge
The company needed accurate, transparent, and defensible emissions calculations to meet their assurance requirements—failing to meet them, would bring a high financial cost.
Solution
Thrust Carbon implemented a comprehensive set of solutions to address these challenges by moving the client to the ISO-assured methodologies, and providing a suite of tools to make assurance processes effortless.
Working with Thrust Carbon delivered
| $2m additional interest payments avoided |
100k+ travel segments collected & analyzed |
Client Data assured to ISO 14083 standard |
Introduction
A leading Fortune 500 financial data company has demonstrated its commitment to sustainability, and cemented itself as an industry leader by linking a billion-dollar corporate bond to its environmental performance.
To avoid severe financial implications, their ambitious climate goals need to be met, and their emissions reporting needs to be robust.
The Challenge
The company faced a number of challenges in their reporting
Firstly, the company's existing business travel reporting was based on average-based methodologies (such as DEFRA), which lacked the granularity and defensibility needed for external assurance.
Without accurate, transparent, and defensible emissions calculations, they risked failing their assurance requirements—potentially costing the business over $2 million annually in higher interest payments.
Secondly, they faced the lengthy annual assurance process which threatened to become a time sink for their sustainability team—drawing their attention away from other sustainability initiatives.
The Solutions
Deep dive comparison of methodologies
Thrust Carbon conducted a deep-dive analysis comparing the clients existing average-based methodology, DEFRA, with more granular approaches, such as ICAO. This helped the company understand the implications of different methodologies, and ultimately select the most appropriate for their reporting needs.
Moving to Thrust Carbons ISO 14083 Assured Methodologies
Thrust Carbon supported the company in moving to from the average-based methodologies, to Thrust Carbon's ISO 14803 assured methodologies. ISO 14083 is a comprehensive set of standards that make business travel carbon calculations clear, understandable, and repeatable, and most notably is backed by the EU.
This move ensured that the client emissions calculations were highly accurate, and gave the company a defensible foundation for their reporting and during their third-party assurance process.
Access to assurance specific tools
“Well, in light of seeing all this data available, we’ll hold any methodology questions—we should be able to find the answers ourselves.” Fortune 500 Data Company's Auditor
As part of Thrust Carbon's Compliance Suite, a suite of tools designed to help company's remain climate compliant, the client gained access to detailed methodology documentation, complete calculation transparency, and the 'Assurance Admin' role—a ring-fenced set of permissions to dive deep into the data behind the carbon calculations. This provided the company with all essential elements for a smooth assurance process—saving them hours in the process.
Impact and Outcomes
The implementation of Thrust Carbon's solution delivered significant results:
- Passed annual assurance: the company successfully passed their annual assurance requirements with the robust, reliable calculations, and compliance tools provided by Thrust Carbon
- Saving $2m annually: Passing the assurance saved the business over $2 million annually in potential additional interest payments on their billion-dollar corporate bond.
- Generated actionable insights: The calculated emissions were 56k tCO2e across 100k segments. Using more accurate methodologies provided the company with more opportunities to drive reduction.
Thrust Carbon is proud to continue to support this Fortune 500 financial data company in meeting both their financial and environmental goals through best-in-class travel emissions intelligence.
