Harnessing the power of travel to fight climate change

Concretely, we’re working hard to increase awareness and access to voluntary carbon markets for travel players. A voluntary carbon market basically permits individuals and organisations to invest in emission reduction projects that compensate emissions that cannot be avoided otherwise. Typically, travel related emissions are frequently difficult to reduce, particularly for long-haul trips, and this is where the offsetting of emissions becomes very relevant.

An example of this, which I talked about at a recent ICAO event in Montreal, is the Carbon Offset projectwe launched in Japan in partnership with the ICAO, myclimate Japanand the Japanese Ministry of Economy. This project enables online travel agencies using Amadeus technology to provide travellers with knowledge of the greenhouse gas emissions being released as a result of their trips and gives them the option to donate to carbon reduction projects to offset those emissions.

Raising Awareness

Unfortunately, in the majority of the cases today, the traveller is not informed about the carbon emissions released as a consequence of their trips during the booking process. We want to change that with travel industry partnerships like the one in Japan.

Our ambition is to expand our Carbon Offset project to other geographies and other distribution channels, so that we can reach more than 500 million travellers per year. With the ICAO carbon calculator, which we can incorporate in the Amadeus platform, we’ll empower travellers around the world to opt for a carbon neutral flight. This has the potential to make a tremendous difference.

Finally, it would be impossible for us to launch projects like this without partners like the ICAO and myclimate. When we work together, our technology and reach multiplies its value, and we can help raise awareness and facilitate access to voluntary carbon markets with the ultimate goal of shaping a more sustainable future of travel.

In this sense, it has been very encouraging to see the impressive number of initiatives and expertise shown at the ICAO Global Aviation Partnerships for Emissions Reductions. These included input from representatives of the scientific community, airport initiatives, alternative fuels initiatives, efficient aircraft recycling projects, and the panel on market-based measures to foster environmental action in which Amadeus participated.