MasterCard, Brighter Planet Carbon Calculator Tracks Business Travel

The task of tracking travel-related carbon emissions has a new tool — MasterCard and Brighter Planet announced a program, MasterCard Carbon Emissions Reporting, designed to make the carbon emissions analysis process easier and more accurate.

Powered by Brighter Planet cloud-based CM1 calculation platform, the data for flights, hotel stays, car rentals, and other contributing activities is automatically tracked and reported for users of the MasterCard corporate card based on their card transactions. The Brighter Planet platform analyzes all of this accumulated travel transaction data  and calculates carbon footprints for the activities. Corporate card account holders gain access to employee travel carbon data through the same MasterCard software they already use to manage purchasing card business intelligence.

The data processed by CM1 platform is output as carbon scores into MasterCard smartdata.gen2 management and reporting solution. The carbon scoring is based on independently validated, standards-compliant calculation methodologies, will let companies benchmark, compare, and report various emissions metrics across organizational divisions.

Last year 39 percent of Global 500 companies analyzed and reported their employee travel footprint, up from 34 percent the year before, according to Brighter Planet.

Rolling out later this year, MasterCard developed the reporting tool after conducting an online study in June 2010. They found that nearly 80 percent of companies surveyed had an interest in green travel initiatives.