For companies committed to serious climate action, the true challenge lies in Scope 3 emissions: the extensive, indirect carbon generated across your entire value chain, often representing up to 90% of a company’s total carbon footprint. This includes everything from employee business travel and hotel stays to procurement and waste, and it’s a massive blind spot for most organisations.
Without the right technology to capture and manage this data, it can become a reporting nightmare for global mobility teams. In this blog, we’ll break down key Scope 3 emissions relevant to your travel programme and how you can calculate and report this data with precision.
Before we get into the reporting process, let’s review what Scope 3 emissions are and how they differ from Scope 1 and Scope 2.
Scope 1 and 2 emissions are relatively straightforward to measure. Scope 1 refers to the direct pollution a company produces, like emissions from company vehicles or on-site furnaces, while Scope 2 is all about the energy you buy, like electricity for your offices. Scope 3, on the other hand, is the most expansive and complex category. This is where global mobility’s environmental impact truly lies.
Here’s a quick snapshot of what each emission type covers:
For many businesses, Scope 3 emissions can comprise upwards of 70% of their total carbon footprint. While a manufacturing company might see their biggest impact in production, for a tech or service-based firm, the bulk of their emissions are tied to things like business travel, employee commutes, and purchased goods.
The challenge here lies in the sheer volume and fragmentation of data sources. You're relying on data from hundreds (or thousands) of suppliers — from airlines and hotel chains to relocation vendors and local transport services. Without a centralised platform, consolidating this information is incredibly difficult.
Global mobility teams are at the heart of several crucial Scope 3 emissions categories, and accurately capturing this data is necessary for a complete emissions profile.
This includes all emissions from air travel, train travel, and ground transportation for business-related trips. For a global mobility programme, this means reporting on flights for new assignees, trips for site visits, and even local travel during an assignment.
While this might seem minor, the daily commute of a global workforce adds up quickly. This category covers all emissions from employees travelling between their homes and their work locations.
Depending on your programme, other categories can be relevant, like Upstream Transportation and Distribution (Category 4) for moving household goods, or Waste Generated in Operations (Category 5) for waste from temporary housing or company-leased properties.
The emissions from global mobility are often hidden in plain sight. They are tied to the very services that make a relocation successful.
Most organisations track the cost of a hotel stay, but few have the ability to track its carbon footprint. A single hotel night can have a significant environmental impact, including the electricity used to power the room and even the water used for laundry.
The flight a relocating employee takes from one state or country to another is a major source of emissions, as is the taxi they take from the airport. These are critical data points typically lost in fragmented reporting.
When you book through a non-standard vendor, it’s nearly impossible to get reliable emissions data. This leads to gaps in your reporting and forces you to rely on less-accurate estimations.
Calculating emissions from accommodation requires a level of detail most current systems can't provide — what you need is verified, granular data.
For a relocation or extended-stay booking, a solid calculation requires three key pieces of data:
The biggest roadblocks in gathering housing emissions data are a fragmented supplier network, where data lives in silos, and a lack of standardisation. Very few platforms can provide a carbon footprint per property, and without this primary data, you risk inaccurate reporting.
Regulations like the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) in Europe are raising the bar for corporate sustainability. Companies must now provide audit-ready, verifiable data, not just high-level estimates. Relying on average emissions factors is no longer sufficient, there is a growing demand for primary data to prove compliance.
AltoVita’s comprehensive booking platform is built to solve this exact problem. By standardising and digitising the entire global mobility ecosystem, we help you seamlessly capture the necessary emissions data.
Our EcoStats feature provides accurate CO₂ emission data per night, validated by green building certifications and environmental metrics. This gives you primary, auditable data in real time. You can segment your carbon footprint by region, vendor, traveller type, and stay duration for detailed reporting.
EcoStats also translates these abstract figures into relatable equivalents, like tree seedlings planted or smartphones charged, making it simple to manage emissions and meet your ESG goals.
AltoSearch utilises EcoStats directly within the booking flow. By allowing you and your employees to view the estimated CO₂ emissions for each property at the search stage, the platform empowers users to compare options transparently and choose sustainable, high-quality accommodation with confidence.
Our platform helps global mobility teams move beyond basic tracking to proactive compliance. By providing granular, audit-ready data on accommodation emissions, we help companies meet evolving ESG reporting frameworks and prepare for future Scope 3 disclosure requirements.
Ready to take control of your Scope 3 emissions reporting and turn this challenge into a strategic advantage?
Discover how AltoVita’s platform provides the data and insights necessary to simplify housing-related emissions reporting and meet your ESG goals.