This guide outlines how you can cut down the carbon footprint of your events schedule, particularly for capital markets.
When you think about your ESG initiatives for sustainability in business, do you include your capital markets events schedule? You should. Travelling to and from events creates an enormous amount of pollution that will inflate your corporate carbon footprint.
Look at reducing your carbon footprint
Why Going Back to the Way Things Were Might Not Work
Many IROs and C-suite professionals are ready to return to their usual, in-person schedule. After three years of virtual meetings, they’re looking forward to meeting investors face-to-face.
Despite these exciting new prospects, it may not be time to do away with your webcasting and virtual events platform. This technology joins a variety of tools for IR professionals needed in the modern workday.
A virtual event experience comes with many advantages. Purpose-built IR tools mean you have access to premium event management and expert consulting, along with post-event analytics you can use to further your IR strategy.
A virtual capital market events schedule can also help you establish yourself as a sustainable brand with a lower carbon footprint. That’s because it will eliminate all the travelling needed to host or attend these events.
Your team won’t have to traverse the globe during roadshows, and your guests won’t have to take international flights to attend AGMs or investor days.
What is the Impact of Business Travel?
Business travel is hard on the environment because so much of it is done by air. Unfortunately, air travel is the least sustainable way to get around. It alone accounts for 2.5 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.
While 2.5% may not seem like much on a global scale, it has far more impact on your bottom line and carbon footprint. According to the Guardian, a single long-haul flight from London to LA, for example, creates more carbon emissions than the average person does in an entire year. That’s 1,650 kilograms of CO2.
Even one short-haul flight (like someone flying from London to New York) generates nearly 1,000 kilograms of CO2. That’s more greenhouse gases than the annual emissions of someone living in a developing country.
You might be willing to bite the bullet when it comes to one flight, but it’s rarely ever just one trip. Every business meeting, conference, roadshow, and roundtable adds up — more than you think.
For Salesforce, a cloud-based SaaS firm, business travel accounted for 146,000 metric tons of CO2 in its fiscal 2020. A year later, the firm announced it grounded its business travel emissions to 20,000 metric tons for the fiscal year 2021.
How much greenhouse gas you’re in-person itinerary creates will depend on the size of your company and how often you take to the skies.
You can significantly reduce your carbon footprint simply by sticking to the virtual space. The latest IR technology makes it possible to host a seamless virtual experience with backend support that can help you analyze investor behavior.
ESG funds are taking a larger piece of the pie today at the same time the SEC is cracking down on carbon disclosures. You can’t afford to overlook how business travel for your capital markets events plays a role in your ESG platform — and your carbon footprint.
