Business Travel

Definition:

Scope 3 emissions from business travel includes emissions from transportation of employees for business-related activities in vehicles not owned by Stanford, such as for faculty flying to academic conferences. Stanford has also expanded this definition to include all university-sponsored travel for students and visitors, an exception within higher education that does not typically apply in other industries.

View the full Business Travel White Paper

Methodology:

Air Travel:

Procurement data is used to generate reports with destination and arrival airports for each trip, which is used to determine flight mileage. Distance-specific EPA emission factors and a radiative forcing factor are applied to each flight.

Lodging:

Procurement data on hotel nights is used to calculate emissions using DEFRA emissions factors. 

Ground Transportation:

a complex system using procurement data was developed to estimate emissions from ground transportation, but ground transportation ultimately resulted in only 0.4% of emissions. Thus, it will not be recalculated on an annual basis.

In total, emissions in this category equaled 44,203 MTCO2e in 2019.

Read more information on how to travel sustainably.