This article focuses on just one aspect of curbing Scope 3 emissions: business travel. Based on our experience at GreenerU, teleconferencing or remote meetings, when done well, can supplant a great many greenhouse emissions from road or air travel—and save you time and money in the process.
Like the elusive walleye or escaped zoo hippos, Scope 3 emissions are among the most elusive of greenhouse gas emissions to wrangle.
Second Nature describes Scope 3 emissions for higher education institutions as “emissions from sources that are not owned or controlled by the campus, but that are central to campus operations or activities (e.g. non-fleet transportation, employee/student commuting, air travel paid for by your institution).”
Where campuses can upgrade equipment and fixtures to curb Scopes 1 and 2 emissions, Scope 3 reductions are dependent upon mass behavior change by hundreds or thousands of individuals on campus. And that is a daunting challenge for campuses aiming for carbon neutrality.
This article focuses on just one aspect of curbing Scope 3 emissions: business travel. Based on our experience at GreenerU, teleconferencing or remote meetings, when done well, can supplant a great many greenhouse emissions from road or air travel—and save you time and money in the process.
Let me give you an example. For me to travel from our office in Watertown to Boston for a meeting, I would drive 20 miles and be on the road for at least an hour. That means I’m contributing 18 pounds of carbon equivalent to our atmosphere, according to this model. After adding the stress and costs of driving, traffic, and finding parking, plus slowly choking our atmosphere, it’s difficult to make a case for meeting in person.
GreenerU’s consulting client list has included campuses as far afield as North Carolina, Michigan, and Texas. But in spite of our tight-knit relationships, we don’t spend a lot of time on the road. We typically host weekly hour-long check-in meetings with our key stakeholder groups—and thanks to technology, we can conduct these meetings just as effectively remotely as we might in person.
So how can you, too, host teleconferences effectively and smoothly? Though you will no longer need to have your tuxedo dry cleaned, get a blow out, or print out copies of your headshot (that’s how people prepare for in-person meetings, right?), there are still things to prepare and keep in mind to make sure meeting goes off with as few hitches as possible. (Because let’s be honest…technology.)
By no means is teleconferencing a panacea for climate change, nor is it a substitute for an old-fashioned firm handshake and eye-to-eye contact. But for routine check-ins, long-distance meetings, and document review, we can start to chip away at this hunk of Scope 3 emissions through wise investments of our time and energies into hosting effective meetings remotely.
—Julia Weeks was GreenerU’s program associate with the change management team from January 2017 to July 2019.