- The first ever corporate charge card that allows you to offset all your carbon emissions arising from air travel.
Barclaycard Business Sustain
With cheap flights and a rapidly globalising economy, there is now more business air travel than ever, and an ever-increasing impact on the environment. In fact, business flights often account for up to 40%¹ of an organisation’s carbon footprint.
Of course, business travel is often unavoidable – there’s simply no substitute for face-to-face contact. But it is possible to minimise the damage that flying does, with a little help from Barclaycard Business Sustain – the first ever corporate charge card that allows you to offset all your carbon emissions arising from air travel.
How it works
Barclaycard Business Sustain offers the same purchasing power and efficiency as a normal corporate card, but every time it is used to purchase air travel, we work with your Travel Management Company to calculate the carbon emissions associated with the flight, using the air ticket data and statistics provided by DEFRA.
We then complete a commission-free annual trade on your behalf to offset those emissions, buying carbon credits through the award-winning ² Barclays Capital Emission Trading Desk – the largest carbon exchange in Europe.
For the first time, a corporate card offers your staff a really meaningful incentive: the ability to offset the carbon emissions caused by their business air travel†.
Benefits
- Automatic monitoring and offsetting of carbon emissions resulting from your business air travel
- Access to the Certified Emission Reduction market, previously only accessible to governments and UN certification of carbon credits, with use of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism
- Carbon credits are purchased annually on your behalf, commission-free
- Electronic cardholder application form makes it simple to switch all your company cards at once
Carbon credits explained
The carbon credits used to offset your emissions are called Certified Emission Reduction certificates (CERs).They are certified by the UN and represent a reduction in carbon through activities defined under the Clean Development Mechanism in the Kyoto Protocol – for example, installing exhaust filters on cement factories in Brazil, or building wind farms in Nigeria. The reduction in CO2 emissions is independently verified and quantified by the UN, allowing a definitive price to be reached for a tonne of CO2
Until now, the CER market has been available only to global utility companies and governments. But now, Barclaycard Business Sustain makes it accessible to any company using the card.
Easy implentation
To ensure your organisation can benefit from a simple, seamless switch onto Barclaycard Business Sustain, we have designed a special electronic cardholder application form, which avoids paper applications, collating the information electronically and processing applications faster.
For more information about Barclaycard Business Sustain, contact Terry Noble on 07802 806595*or speak to your Relationship Manager.
To view a copy of our Deloitte case study click here
¹ Source: Deloitte Case Study – Internal analysis of Deloitte’s corporate carbon footprint showed that Deloitte’s air travel accounted for over 40% of the total.
² Awards won by Barclays Capital EU Emissions Trading Scheme include:
‘Point Carbon’ Carbon Market Awards – Best Trading Company 2006, 2007
‘Energy Risk’ Number 1 ETS Allowance Trading 2006, 2007
‘Energy Risk’ Number 1 CER Trading 2007
‘Energy Risk’ Pioneers in Emission Dealing 2006
‘Environmental Finance’ Best Trading Company for EU Emis9 sions 2006.
†Charges may apply for the purchase of additional carbon credits dependent on commercial terms.
*Calls may be monitored or recorded to maintain high levels of security and quality of service. For BT customers, calls to 0844 numbers will cost no more than 5p per minute, minimum call charge 5.9p (current at January 2008). The price on non-BT phone lines may be different. Calls made to 07802 numbers are to a mobile phone.
