»ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ

Learn about how you can measure the carbon impact of your travel and spending to easily set baseline sustainability goals for your organization. Listen to the Co-founder and Head of Product for Thrust Carbon explain what a carbon emission is, how we measure it, and what an SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ solutions user can do to reduce their carbon footprint and reach the global net zero goal by 2050 or sooner.

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Transcript:

Jason Grunin:

Hello, my name is Jason Grunin. I'm a Principal Value Consultant here at SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ. My team is part of the Value Experience Group, and our team is really tasked with helping customers maximize their investment within their employee-initiated spend program. So, I've been here at SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ for about two years and prior to that, I spent almost 10 years in higher education and four years within the federal government space. Travel and expense has been a part of my life for probably the past 15 years and I'm really also passionate about sustainability. And today, I have with me Kit Brennan, the Co-founder and Head of Product at Thrust Carbon. Kit, you want to say hi and introduce yourself?

Kit Brennan:

Hi, thank you, Jason, for that warm introduction. Yes, so I'm one of the co-founders here at Thrust Carbon and we're a technology company with a vision of a world where our actions don't have to cost the earth and really, we're focused on, how do we make travel effortlessly green? We are big believers that if sustainability is straightforward, then the majority of the world will move towards more sustainable solutions, so it's really, how do we make it just so effortless that everyone can be sustainable and act sustainably? So it's great to be here within the business. I focus, as you mentioned, on the product and also very much on our methodology-side of things as well. So really excited to delve into the detail of everything from what is a carbon emission, to how we measure it, to what can a »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ user do to reduce their carbon footprint?

Jason Grunin:

That's awesome. You know, that's really one of the things we're here to help answer and work with, prospects and customers alike, and those just trying to expand their knowledge on sustainability. We hope you find today's podcast helpful as we talk about what is sustainability, what is an emission? And then coming down to the methodology that is used to calculate emissions from business travel. I spent some time over the last year, working with our partners and internal stakeholders across the SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ ecosystem, trying to figure out what is the message to our customers? Looking at travel managers, expense managers, sustainability leads. Also, what does employee sentiment look like, around this topic? And the generational change that has occurred, especially within new hires, about how sustainability and being responsibly sustainable, if you will, is important to the new world of employees that are entering the workforce today.

And one of the things that I came to the conclusion, after this last yearlong endeavor, is really coming down to, if you can't measure, you can't manage. And that goes back to an old saying, I think, that is really important and driving so much of what we are here to talk about today. You have to be able to have systems in place to measure and manage your travel and expense data in order to be able to put your thumb on how is my business performing? So that you can establish a baseline and then look at how can I improve year over year. And I know the pandemic has caused a great challenge, but also really helped organizations reduce footprint over the last two years. But a lot of that is reopening up and travel is resuming. And I think we're all excited to be back on the road and traveling and visiting customers and employee meetings offsite. So maybe to start off, Kit, what is an emission and how is it measured?

Kit Brennan:

Yeah, well, that's a really great question. So an emission firstly is a release of a gas, which will warm the atmosphere above what would normally happen without the release of that gas, right? So global warming is obviously the term and we normally refer to these as carbon emissions. But one thing to make really clear to begin with, is actually carbon is not the only greenhouse gas. There's about seven main ones. I think that the other most popular one is methane. The classic example is obviously from cows farting, but one of the reasons we talk about them as carbon emissions is, we average out the effect of all of those emissions into the equivalent of if it was CO2. And so an emission is a release of any kind of gas in its CO2 equivalent, which will warm the atmosphere.

And ultimately, if we want to prevent a climate disaster, we have to try and reduce as many of those emissions as possible and ultimately get down the net emissions to zero. In terms of how it's measured that is the big question. And I think we'll spend a lot of today talking about it. There's different ways that you ultimately measure it, right? The ideal would be every time a gas comes out of a system, we know exactly how much has come out, but ultimately when you buy a plane ticket, you are not attaching a meter to the outside plane engine to measure what gases are coming out, right? So the way it's measured is, we use methodologies that convert the data that you do have available. For example, where are you traveling between, and convert that into what the most likely emissions are, and working off some really great research by a lot of very smart scientists to average out and say, okay, so the average say, kilometer traveled by a plane, must be this much CO2.

So that's the core of how it's measured. There's fortunately lots of different types of methodologies. If it's not a travel emission, if you've purchased an item, then there's methodologies based around spend, around weight. So if you purchased an electronic device per kilogram of electronics, there's a multiplier as well. So ultimately it's a data collection exercise, and then applying the right methodology to that particular data set. And it's difficult. There's a lot of data sets out there, but fortunately, there's also a lot of tooling available to make it much easier for people as well. So it's not as daunting as it first sounds. And we'll go into that later, how you can utilize tooling and what the best methodologies are, for a particular type of emission as well.

Jason Grunin:

So when I first saw that CO2 little E at the end, I was always like, huh, I wonder what that meant. It's the equivalent, right? So for those of you wondering, it's the same principle, it's converting it into a standard unit to allow the comparison and what is the carbon dioxide equivalent of that release.

Kit Brennan:

Right. I think a good analogy there is with your base reporting currency, right? So the same thing you do with finances, you don't just ignore everything, not in your base reporting currency. If your base reporting currency is USD, you don't ignore all of your Yen transactions. You convert those into USD as well. Same thing with the equivalent.

Jason Grunin:

Great analogy. So Kit, well, what is a Scope Three emission and why is it important?

Kit Brennan:

So I guess before we answer Scope Three, then let's talk about Scopes One and Two. So three scopes altogether, and Scope One and Two are normally easier to calculate, but those are Scope One, the emissions from things that you directly burn, right? So if you have a fuel and you burn it, you are directly releasing CO2. That's your Scope One emissions. Scope Two emissions, that's really basically electricity that you purchase. So you are purchasing the energy, someone else has burnt it, but it's pretty direct to you, but it's not you directly burning.

And so, Scope Three is everything else, right? It's the emissions across your entire value chain that aren't Scope One and Two. And they're also typically broken down as well, into these subcategories, but Scope Three are widely regarded as some of the hardest to measure, because it's so broad. And travel in particular is a huge part of most businesses' Scope Three emissions. It's the kind of purchased emissions that you are responsible for, if you buy an airplane ticket, if you stay in a hotel, those ultimately are emissions that can be attributable to you. And so it's those emissions from that value chain.

Jason Grunin:

So that's really one of the opportunities that having a managed system in place like SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ is, that I have tools in place across the globe to be able to measure all of my business travel and have a standard place to go pull that data from, right?

Kit Brennan:

Yeah, absolutely. Probably the most difficult part of measuring a business' carbon emissions is getting the data, right? Once you have it, I wouldn't say it's easy to calculate, but there's a lot of methodologies. So you go through the data set and you apply the right methodology to the right piece of data. But if you don't have that data consolidated in one place, your job's going to be much harder. And I totally agree having a unified T&E platform is going to make life so much more easy because it's all going to be in one place, you've got something to work off.

Jason Grunin:

So that's a really great segue and I'm going to switch it up here for a minute. We talked about reporting requirements and maybe this is a great time to really just lay out a little bit of what are those reporting requirements, right? There's so many out there. There's DEFRA, which is now I think the DEBIS U.K. agency, there's GHG, there's the EPA. Which one should I be using and why does it matter?

Kit Brennan:

Yeah, well, unfortunately, never an easy answer. You want to be using all of them, but let's break it down. So, first thing is these are normally all thought of, as methodologies for calculating CO2, but they're not all equal. So almost every business will say that they want to report according to the greenhouse gas protocol, the GHG protocol methodology, but actually we consider it a meta methodology, or just a framework for calculating carbon, because this is what tells you that you need to report according to Scope One, Scope Two, Scope Three, and which business units are relevant there, but it's not going to tell you exactly what multipliers to use. It doesn't say if you spend a night in a hotel it's equivalent to this much CO2. So to do that, you're going to rely on data from, as you mentioned, DEFRA now DEBIS, everyone still calls it the DEFRA methodology, EPA has similar numbers available.

And there's a number of other sources as well. And those will actually give you the multipliers, the factors that you'll use for reporting on that framework of the GHG protocol. In terms of which is the right one to use, well, honestly, it depends again, on your data set. This is why it's important to have it all in one place to have your data organized, because if you want to work out the carbon emissions of a train journey, then where is that train journey? If it's in the UK, then DEFRA has a really great multiplier that you use, where you multiply the number of kilometers by a number that DEFRA give you. And that will tell you how much CO2, but if it's a train journey in the United States, then you want to use the EPA's number to multiply by.

And then there's that you could say, there's also custom multipliers as well, particularly if you have a responsible supplier who can tell you what the CO2 looks like for a particular purchase or journey, whatever type of expense that is, they might be able to say, "Okay, for every dollar you spend with us, every kilometer you travel with us, this is what your carbon looks like." And so those would be custom, but actually, they're still some of the best data sources available, and you're going to apply those according to the greenhouse gas protocol, guidelines and rules, but still a custom multiplier on top.

Jason Grunin:

Okay. That's a really great point, right? And why it's so important to work with your suppliers and vendors across the travel space to help you as a customer, understand, if I have a contract say with a particular airline, of course, they're going to be able to deliver to you a lot more detailed information about the particular aircraft, the type that was flown, the fuel mix that was potentially used on a route. And that should also play into that additional data that you should be pulling to help give your organization a better glimpse into how is my spend impacted with a particular supplier. So looking into that, a lot of the customers I've spoken with and continue to have conversations with, have 2030, 2040, 2050 net zero, or emission neutral, or carbon neutral goals for operations by those particular years. What's the difference? What's carbon neutral versus net zero?

Kit Brennan:

Yeah, that's a great question. And this is often the start of most businesses' journeys and in many cases handed down from the C-Suite to business leaders to work out where the C-Suite might have turned around and said, "Okay, everyone, we're going carbon neutral by the end of the decade, or we're going for net zero by 2030, 2040, 2050." And you as a travel manager, as expense manager, you've got to work out what that even means. So carbon neutral is where you have worked out what your emissions look like, and then you've purchased carbon offsets. And I'm sure we'll come to carbon offsets later, but you purchase carbon offsets. And these are where you are funding de-carbonization in another part of the world. So not directly within your supply chain typically, but it could be funding a renewable energy power plant in a low-income nation, for example.

And if you manage to purchase as many tons of carbon credits as your business have emitted, then that way you get to carbon neutral. Now that is not ideal, right? The ideal is for a business to not emit at all, but most companies can't do that overnight. And in fact, it's almost impossible for any company to do it overnight, because the ways that you could decarbonize and to reach net zero are quite difficult, but net zero is the end goal. And net zero are where you emit carbon, you can still emit carbon, but ultimately you are also capturing carbon through your supply chain, so that everything nets out to zero.

And so net zero is really difficult, but according to the last IPCC report, and if we don't want the world to heat up any more than it needs to, the whole world really needs to reach net zero as soon as possible in the next couple of years, certainly before 2050, which was the old goal. And many businesses now are setting net zero goals that are far ahead of 2050. So we're often seeing net zero by 2030, 2040, which is really ambitious and really difficult, but just about possible. So, yes, so carbon neutral is part of that pathway though, to getting to net zero and both are incredibly important.

Jason Grunin:

So how do I really begin to consider my Scope Three emissions, right? How do I measure? And do I treat it like my financial statements and currency? Or how should I be looking at this?

Kit Brennan:

Yeah. The analogy stands up actually really well with financial accounting, which is why we call it carbon accounting. It's really important to treat it as a balance sheet, to work out for every unit of your business, what their emissions look like. And if you are capturing carbon, what that capture looks like as well. And once you're able to do that, then you have a balance sheet then you can then apply things like carbon credits and carbon capture to start either getting to carbon neutral or net zero. But as a result, if we are treating it as a financial budget equivalent, then it just goes to show why every part of that balance sheet is important.

Some businesses want to ignore some emissions because maybe the data's hard to access, or maybe it's a small part of their overall emissions, but you wouldn't ignore part of your balance sheet, your financial balance sheet, especially as many of your easy wins could be in that smaller section. And so we think it's incredibly important to treat it as a balance sheet and to add up everything. And ultimately, if you want to comply with many of the regulatory requirements that are coming, if you want to comply with your shareholder and consumer demands, then really you need to make sure your sustainability balance sheet is complete.

Jason Grunin:

You brought up a really important subject. And one that has just been so prevalent in media and shareholder discussions and the news lately, and is obviously important to the generations that are coming into the workforce. And which is why we're seeing so many of these regulatory requirements. Organizations are responsible for complying with rules from the country in which they operate in, right? So we've got the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, issuing rules about carbon reporting and financial disclosures related to sustainable travel. We've got the UK Streamlined Energy Carbon Reporting requirement, or SECR, which is coming, or actually already here, the EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, or SFDR. We've got the UN regulations, the Paris Agreement. What do all those mean and should I be running to my compliance department and asking if we're following those regulations?

Kit Brennan:

Yeah. What do they all mean? So with reporting requirements, all of them that you mentioned are incredibly important. And as the gist is very clear, it differs for every country. But what we're seeing in most Western nations is a move to reporting requirements, starting with Scope One and Scope Two, and then moving onto Scope Three. And so you mentioned in the UK, the SECR requirements, Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting requirement. That started as Scope One and Scope Two, but it's moving towards requiring companies to also report in their Scope Three emissions. And it applies to the largest businesses out there. But without a doubt, those requirements are going to start trickling down until, in five or 10 years, just as a company has to publish annual accounts, they will, without a doubt, have to publish an annual sustainability report that complies with the internationally-recognized standards for carbon reporting.

The SEC's announcement again, very similar, focused more on Scope Three, there some businesses in the U.S. already do have to report on Scope One and Two. If you're one of those businesses, you probably already know, because the EPA is probably already talking to you, but regardless, it's really important that businesses realize that reporting requirements are coming. And especially if you're a multinational, there's a good chance it's coming in at least one of the nations that you operate in, if not multiple. Outside of the legal requirements, you've then got shareholder requirements. So more and more large shareholders, especially pension funds, are requiring that the companies that they invest in, also publish sustainability reports. They want to be a responsible shareholder and where companies aren't, we are seeing shareholder rebellions at some of the world's largest oil companies. Exxon Mobile and Chevron both had shareholder rebellions with an activist investor, even getting board seats at Exxon Mobile, for example.

So it's happening more and more often. And if businesses don't want to be on the back foot, if they don't want to have these things dictated on them, then they're going to need to be proactive. They're going to need to start proactively looking at their emissions, working out how they can reduce them and start publishing a sustainability report. It sounds like a lot of work and don't get me wrong. There is a fair amount of work, but fortunately we've come a long way in the last couple decades and there's a lot of tooling out there. There's a lot of companies out there that can help with this and so it's not a Wild West. There are straightforward established approaches, but the first and foremost thing you got to do is you got to have all your data in one place to make it possible so that you can start looking at this and start forming a plan.

Jason Grunin:

So you mentioned shareholders, but I think also from an employee sentiment perspective, Kit, we are seeing the new generation of employees entering the workforce and sustainable travel, sustainable operations, sourcing, et cetera, are so important to that generation that they're willing to change jobs and go to a organization that puts those as a priority. And obviously we all know that one of the most expensive line items on our balance sheet is employee retention, right? And the training and the resources that we devote to maintaining a workforce. So the question becomes to travel and policy managers, are you willing to change a policy if it means that employees are going to go to a different organization? And so on that note, where should travel policy touch on sustainability? And I think it's important to say that it really should be everywhere, from the way your lowest logical airfare is configured to the way you allow freedom and flexibility to choose the type of aircraft and the route that an employee is going to take.

It shouldn't necessarily be the lowest cost anymore. Looking at time, are you allowing employees to book the most direct option to save them time and have potentially the lowest footprint or emission between that point-to-point trip? How does it play into lodging and thinking about, should you allow them to book a green hotel? And what is a green hotel? Is it a five-star luxury hotel that has full-service features where the footprint of operations from that hotel might be higher than a three-star, non-full-service for a one-night stay? Those are things that should be considered as you evaluate, what does your policy allow for? Obviously receipts, that's one that we all talk about. How can you use e-receipts and touch-less transactions and the carbon footprint that comes from all of the paper that's being captured and stored, and then re-manufactured into something else?

Can we remove the paper to begin with? Looking at the conversation for a lot of our customers in Europe, where there is a lot more heavy push for that plane-to-train mentality, encouraging folks to take a train where possible between, say London and Paris, or Amsterdam and Paris, and push the mentality of productivity and convenience and less stress. And we all know that flying is not exactly the least stressful option these days. All of that really plays into maintaining that traveler wellbeing and allowing you to measure those kind of sentiments from your employees, are critical, as you begin to reevaluate how sustainability plays into your T&E policy.

Kit Brennan:

I couldn't agree more. The Great Resignation as people have been calling it over the last year or two, I think has shown everyone that people no longer care purely about the paycheck that they're receiving, right? There's so much more that comes into it, whether it's work-from-home policies, whether it's their travel policies, whether it's just the relationship they have with their managers. And when you consider that for Millennials and Gen Z, the climate disaster is the single most important to the generation, right? It comes up in survey again and again, most important issue for Gen Z, most important issue for Millennials. And then combine that with the fact that they're not purely motivated by money and yeah, they're going to choose where they work based on this. And ultimately exactly, as you say, it's more than just a T&E item at that point.

It frankly relates to every part of the business at that point, because if you want the best people, they're motivated by this stuff. In terms of what that means for the travel policy, then it's a tough one, right? Because I think a lot of businesses get excited by sustainability because they actually see an opportunity to save money. And in some cases that is true. Maybe it's having less business-class tickets, business-class means you have a higher proportion of the carbon emissions on a plane because you're responsible for a higher footprint on that plane. And so some businesses decide to change their travel policy to remove business class. But then we have to remember that all of this is holistic as well. If you take away employees' business-class use, they're not going to like that. At least many employees won't.

So in which case, how do you compensate for that? And maybe if people don't have access to business class, you can still buy them a lounge pass. Maybe you get them a nicer hotel, which as you say, is also possibly an eco-hotel, but fundamentally, aircraft emissions are far higher than hotel emissions. So it should still net out to lower emissions. And for some businesses, they're investing in things like sustainable aviation fuel so that they can continue to fly without sacrificing their existing travel policies. And that is a policy in and of itself, to do something like that. It all starts with better data. And I know this is something we keep coming back to, but ultimately the levers that a company can use to help reduce their emissions will be different for every company.

For some businesses it means if they're a European travel-heavy company, then there are going to be a lot of opportunities to move to high-speed rail and so that's a great option. If you are a business that's based in the U.S., not on the Northeast Corridor, then high-speed rail doesn't really exist, in which case, maybe it's an analysis of which departments are traveling, trying to cut down on internal meetings versus external meetings. So this is something we think about a lot, not just looking at the carbon data, but all the metadata associated with carbon, who is emitting, why are they emitting? What's the drip of this code? And so again, better data, better analysis means you start making intelligent decisions that make sense for your company. And then finally something that's unfortunately too often overlooked is the comms piece.

So, okay, you want to reduce your carbon. You should tell everyone in your company what you're doing, because otherwise they'll just see their travel policy change and assume it's for the wrong reasons. And so you have to be careful about this. It's not to say you don't do it, but you have to think about how you communicate this. And finally, one thing we're a huge fan of and support as well, is carbon budgets. So again, bringing back this analogy to financial accounting and budgeting, but instead of telling people how to travel, instead give them the data, give them a budget and tell them to work out how they're going to reduce their carbon, because people are pretty smart with this stuff that they know, if they're on a high-speed rail route.

And a manager will probably start telling their employees, "Okay, start moving to train, to reduce our emissions." For other business units, they will look at who is traveling and decide to prioritize who's traveling. So carbon budgets are a really great tool to put the control into people's hands. And if there's one thing we know, it's people like to be empowered, but you got to give them the right data and the right inputs to enable that to happen as well.

Jason Grunin:

So being a part of SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ, we've been in a really great position to partner with Thrust Carbon and offer an integration for our customers to be able to help them solve the challenges that we begin to discuss today. So a couple of days ago, I was talking to a customer who is struggling with leakage and their biggest challenge is how do they measure the emissions from their leakage? So here at SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ, we're recently announced a partnership with Thrust Carbon. Kit, do you want to maybe take a minute and describe how a customer like this who has »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ Expense and Travel, but is suffering with leakage in their travel program, how they can use their expense data to solve and measure that gap?

Kit Brennan:

Yeah. So I think a great place to start is with how we actually work with SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ. So as you said, we're an out-center partner, which we're really excited about and is just such a great way to help companies reduce their emissions. And effectively, whenever something happens inside of »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ, be that »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ travel or »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ expense, we automatically receive that data if the business is connected to us. We automatically receive that data. We calculate the carbon, we calculate all of that metadata we mentioned before. So what departments are they part of? What employee is it? And we use all of that to build really great carbon reporting. For concur travel it's much easier. We get all that information around what routing they're on and we're able to calculate someone's carbon really accurately from that, right down to the aircraft type used on a particular flight or for a particular hotel.

What the carbon emission would look like for hotels and that location, for that star rating. So lots of detail. »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ Expense is, obviously harder, right? But really important if you want to capture the leakage of a travel program, especially, and also non-travel expenses, right? So these could be your ride-sharing receipts, it could be your meal receipts. But in particular for any of them through »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ expense, in many cases, you're not going to know the details of the transaction, right? If it's someone's just expense to flight, you might just know the spend data, in which case the methodology you're going to want to apply then, and we do apply, is one based around spend. And so fortunately for us, we're looking at millions of flights all the time and with all of those, we have access to the spend data.

And so we're able to work backwards from this. And if someone spent say a thousand dollars, we are able to look at all of the other spends of a thousand dollars on our system and work out what is the most likely amount of carbon emitted. It's not a perfect methodology. It's not going to be as good as if we actually know what origin and destination have traveled between. But the reality of travel data, as anyone who works in this industry knows, is that often, it's not perfect. You don't have every detail, so you have to work with the unknowns. And so this is where a spend methodology is really great. And we apply that to almost every category. If it's air, hotel, we've got spend methodologies and also taking into account things like currencies and localization. So if someone submits a receipt for a taxi, then the distance that $10 in a taxi will get you differs for every country, right?

Taxis are much more expensive and much more affordable in different locations. And so we also take that into account, so that we can try and calculate what's the most likely distance for that spend in that location. And from that workout, what the most likely emission is, but yes, and once we have all of that, again, that's all coming into the finalized reporting. So you can report in the top level CO2 number, but then you can also start breaking down those emissions and understanding who is emitting, why are they emitting, what are the opportunities to reduce that carbon.

Jason Grunin:

That's great, Kit, because I think that's as a former travel manager myself, it's obviously one of the biggest concerns I had, is how do I capture all these varying data sources and then pull it all together and use AI and organizational benchmarks from other organizations to help me manage and measure, what did my CO2 emissions from business travel look like? So Kit, one of the things I hear from my suppliers is they're running routes on biodiesel or sustainable aviation fuel, green fuel. What is that? And should I pay attention to it?

Kit Brennan:

Yeah. So sustainable aviation fuel, SAF for short, is an incredibly exciting development for how aviation can start moving towards being more sustainable. And in short, what it is, it's aviation fuel that has been made artificially and there's quite a few different approaches for how you can make this. Some planes are using it running off old cooking oil. Other aircraft engines are using it running off synthetically made directly from, from plants grown for the purpose of being aviation fuel. One thing to nip in the bud straight away, is that the methodologies around sustainable aviation fuel take into account the underlying emissions of making that fuel in the first place. So no one is trying to pretend that you can eliminate all of the emissions of aviation by going to an artificial fuel.

There are some emissions from creating that fuel, but it's a really great step in the right direction. And it's a lot easier to decarbonize farming for example, than it is to decarbonize a fossil fuel. So once you have your sustainable aviation fuel, as every airline vendor is saying, is being pushed onto planes. It's still a very, very small amount of the market, less than not 0.1% of all aviation fuel is sustainable aviation fuel, but it is a market that is just growing exponentially right now. Most manufacturers will tell you that current sustainable aviation fuel volumes are sold out for at least three years. And so in many cases you are pre-purchasing it rather than actually purchasing it to go on your carbon accounting balance sheet for today. And then one of the great things about it though, is it represents an actual reduction in the carbon that you release from traveling.

So again, as part of going towards net zero, it's incredibly important because it's one of the few approaches that will enable you to keep flying while getting to zero emissions. There are other approaches out there, electric aircraft, for example, but that's still decades away and electric aircraft, frankly, due to the rules of physics, will never really be able to be used on medium or long haul routes, only over short haul. And so sustainable aviation feels a really important part of this picture. So what we advise our clients is, be aware of it and start thinking about a plan for using sustainable aviation fuel. You don't need to commit to millions of dollars today, but if you want to, in 20 years' time be reaching net zero, then you're probably going to want start investing in it in the next five to 15 years to enable you to reach net zero while still traveling and growing.

So if there's one thing I could leave you with, it's not that you need to commit to net zero today, or that you have to completely change your travel policy today. It's to start measuring, to start understanding, and from that, everything will be exponentially easier because you'll actually have the insights to draw on to know what your next steps even look like. So I can't recommend highly enough, get your data in one place, start looking at it. We make it really effortless to be green. So I'm going to say consider us, but there are other providers out there, working directly with SAP. There's some reporting within »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ around sustainability, and have a look at that as well. But ultimately start considering this. And as you move along that journey, we really hope you'll consider Thrust Carbon and ultimately, hopefully we can all save the world together, by doing our bit to reduce each and every company's footprint. And thank you so much, Jason, for this opportunity as well. It's been a really great conversation.

Jason Grunin:

Thank you for joining us, Kit, and from the SAP »ÆÉ«¶ÌÊÓƵ side if there's one thing I can share with you, it's used the momentum that the generation and the workforce is currently calling for, to petition and leverage this as a way to drive policy changes and travel and expense policy changes, that you're aligned with the corporate goal and mission that your shareholders and employees are both pushing for. Thank you to Kit for spending time with us today, to talk about Thrust Carbon and the power of data. And we wish you all a fantastic rest of your day. Thank you.

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