Travel Hub tool saves carbon and cash

The acounting profession and business community are still reluctant to get to grips on carbon accounting and sustainability issues, but are beginning to come around according to one pioneer in the field.

Paul Adderley is the founder of Edinburgh-based Sustainable Opportunity Solutions, a consultancy that has come up with an online software application for modelling the costs and carbon use of business travel.

Travel Hub is an online journey planner that helps the business compare the time and cost of different means of travel to choose the one that best suits their priorities at the time. Productivity, costs and carbon impact are all adversely affected by business travel, but the art is really how to get the balance right, not only to save energy, but to maximise profits and even retain jobs, according to Adderley.

Travel Hub has been adopted by Natural England and helped the conservation body quantify £2.8m in financial savings from its carbon reduction plan.

“Carbon management through TravelHub is not a cost. It is simply the application of an analysis tool that gives the full cost and carbon impact on door-to-door business travel,” Adderley said. “This in turn allows for a change in technology (more tele/video conferencing) and behaviour (train rather than car) to cut the volatility of cost impacts on profit.

"I gave a talk to the ICAEW recently and where three years ago some members were rather prickly about carbon accounting, there is increasing realisation that a change in technology and behaviour reduces future energy price rises.”

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