Empowering change

COMPANY: Arcadis, a design and engineering consultancy. Arcadis took home the award for Achievement in Sustainability – Managed Travel Programme at the BTN Group’s Business Travel Sustainability Awards Europe earlier this year.

SUSTAINABILITY COMMITMENTS: Achieve net zero GHG emissions by 2035, reflecting a 90 per cent reduction in absolute emissions (against a 2019 baseline); Reduce overall business travel emissions by 35 per cent by 2025; Reduce air travel emissions by 50 per cent by 2025; Transition company fleet to electric vehicles by 2030.

NUMBER OF TRAVELLERS: 25,000

KEY ACTIONS:
• Consolidated CO2 emissions data to create quarterly, personalised carbon footprint reports for all travellers, globally
• Identified meaningful CO2 equivalents for employees
• Automated messaging within booking tool to remind and recommend modality change from air to rail across several routes
• Established a network of change champions to support emissions reduction initiatives

Last November, Amsterdam-based design and consulting firm Arcadis committed to achieving net zero across its value chain by 2035. The company also set an ambitious goal to reduce overall business travel emissions by 35 per cent (against a 2019 baseline) by 2025, and set a specific air emissions reduction target of 50 per cent by 2025.

According to its 2023 annual report, released in March, business travel emissions (including air, private vehicles, short-term hired vehicles, public transport and taxis) have already decreased by 30 per cent, while air emissions are down 26 per cent against the 2019 baseline.

To ensure it remains on track, Arcadis recently began deploying quarterly CO2 footprint reports to its 25,000 travellers globally. The quarterly emails detail travel-related carbon emissions for the previous three months and provide personalised suggestions for less carbon intensive options for future trips, such as a rail alternative for a specific route or a hotel in a recently visited destination with a lower carbon impact, for example.

“Our key focus [here] is to educate our people to focus on the micro changes,” explains Arcadis global sustainability manager for travel, Jill Smit. “[We wanted to create] a platform where people can engage with their own carbon footprint.”

Critical to this engagement effort was the need to make CO2 emissions data more tangible and relatable to travellers. Working with travel sustainability intelligence specialist Thrust Carbon, Arcadis identified CO2 equivalents that attributed a value to carbon that was meaningful to employees. For example, for Arcadis travellers working in construction, quarterly reports compare CO2 emissions to the impact of building a three- or four-bedroom house.

“We all know what $100 or €100 gives you, but when it comes to carbon, it's a foreign currency that people are not aware of… we want to make people aware of the actual impact of their travels,” adds Smit.

On a strategic level, Arcadis is looking to showcase how incremental adjustments – or “micro changes” – adopted by 100 per cent of travellers can contribute to substantial reductions in CO2 emissions without impacting client relationships or collaboration.

To steer travellers in the right direction, the company has built pop-up messaging into its booking tool to ‘nudge’ travellers towards more sustainable options in accordance with a new policy that stipulates any journey of less than 700 kilometres, where options are available, should be made via rail.

“This is very much an awareness campaign,” says Arcadis' global travel director, Nikki Parsons, so rail travel is “encouraged” rather than strictly enforced. To sweeten the deal, first class travel is permitted for rail journeys longer than four hours.

Additionally, electric vehicles are prioritised in search results within the company's booking tool in most markets, while in markets where such filters aren’t available, Parsons says the travel team is “showing people how they can find EVs to make sure everyone is clear”.

On top of this, Arcadis has also introduced a ‘virtual-first’ travel policy and asks travellers to apply a “go, no-go” paradigm to in-person meetings and business travel. Parsons says her team is working on a diagnostic tool that, once implemented, will allow travellers to ‘quantify’ the potential ROI of a business trip with a traffic light system in order to make more informed travel decisions.

“It was a huge undertaking to put in place a global TMC, but we needed to have that consistency”

Getting data under control

In order to execute the above strategy, Arcadis had to first “gain control” of its travel-related emissions data, which was previously fragmented across 12 travel management companies.

This saw the company conduct a global TMC RFP to consolidate emissions data and establish a consistent methodology for global reporting.

“It was a huge undertaking to put in place a global TMC, but we needed to have that consistency,” says Parsons. “We needed to be able to do things at scale and we took an approach of ‘as common as possible, as different as necessary’ so that we found the right mix of what needs to be different in travel.

“It was really important for us, when we had this sustainability lens on it, that we could not only have the right data at the back end, but also have the right data at the time of booking,” she adds.

In 2023, Arcadis also updated its emissions calculation methodology to include well-to-wheel emissions (instead of the commonly used tank-to-wheel calculation) to capture the entire life cycle of fuel – not only the point at which the fuel was consumed by Arcadis.

With the right partners and the right tools in place, Smit says the company is now generating detailed reports that showcase environmental progress against internal targets, down to project level.

“If you don't have the right data, it's really difficult to find the right strategies [to encourage behavioural change],” says Smit. “Especially when it comes to travel, you need to have micro changes in order to make a big change, because if you're just going to say 'you're not allowed to travel anymore', that doesn't really solve anything since you still need to operate as a business.”

“The most effective lever to reduce travel emissions thus far has been empowering our travellers with the right data”

Transparency and accountability

Providing travellers and internal stakeholders with data visibility – and access to reporting tools – was the next critical step.

As well as quarterly impact reports sent to travellers, Arcadis also established an EMS (Environmental Management System) Network of regional sustainability leads, all of whom have access to the same carbon calculators and reporting tools as the company’s global travel team, allowing them to self-serve and support localised sustainability initiatives as well as address travel policy queries.

Furthermore, the company last year launched its ‘Z heroes’ programme, a group of net-zero advocates that Smit says is being harnessed to help drive sustainable travel messages across the business.

This is on top of Arcadis’ net-zero working groups, which meet on a weekly basis to track the progress of CO2 reporting and alignment to the company’s 2035 target.

“There's lots of different pockets of engagement,” says Parsons. Beyond the “incredibly impactful” support of senior executives, she added that the most effective lever to reduce travel emissions thus far has been “empowering our travellers with the right data”.