Expedia Corporate Travel is rolling out a carbon offset program to its corporate travel customers that will be available from April. Expedia® Corporate Travel has partnered with TerraPass to offer environmentally conscious businesses the ability to both calculate the amount of carbon dioxide their employees’ business travel creates and buy the corresponding amount of carbon offsets to balance them.

The new program is available to Expedia® Corporate Travel customers globally. Expedia® Corporate Travel will also make its own travel program carbon neutral by the end of the year through the purchase of TerraPass carbon offsets.

Expedia® Corporate Travel customers can purchase TerraPass carbon offsets for a small fraction of the average cost of an airline ticket or a company’s total annual travel spend. Purchasing a TerraPass enables companies and individual travellers to sponsor measured, verified reductions in greenhouse gas emissions directly proportional to the emissions created by their airline flights. TerraPass proceeds fund clean energy projects, such as wind farms and innovative “cow power” methane capture plants on U.S. dairies.

“Expedia® Corporate Travel is dedicated to practicing ecologically responsible travel, and we are proud to extend environmentally conscious options like TerraPass carbon offsets to our customers across the globe,” said Jean-Pierre Remy, president of Expedia® Corporate Travel. “We are committed to making a positive impact on business travel, by implementing our own green travel policy, as well as through industry advocacy and the promotion of responsible travel. We invite our customers to join us in this endeavor.”

Expedia® Corporate Travel customers can choose from five individual TerraPass products enabling travel managers to create corporate travel policies that allow individual travellers to purchase the TerraPass carbon offsets as they book, based on kilograms of carbon dioxide offset and kilometers/miles flown. Customers may also opt to purchase an enterprise size Green Company package that will offset all emissions generated by the airline travel of their entire company over a given period of time.
“We are pleased to partner with Expedia® Corporate Travel on the first program that provides businesses the opportunity to make their travel carbon neutral,” said Tom Arnold, chief environmental officer of TerraPass. “Expedia® Corporate Travel’s global presence provides an ideal platform to build an awareness of clean travel among business travellers and TerraPass makes it simple to do something about it.”

“The voluntary market for greenhouse gas reductions has tremendous potential, and this is an innovative program that enables business travellers to reduce their greenhouse gas impact. This is a market we want to support by providing certainty for consumers through our verification process,” said Jennifer Martin, Center for Resource Solutions director of certification and analysis.

To signify a contribution to green travel, travellers who purchase TerraPass carbon offsets for short haul flights will receive a sticker and travellers who purchase a higher tier TerraPass package will receive a luggage tag. Companies that adopt a green travel policy and buy a Green Company TerraPass package will receive a plaque, as well as luggage tags for all their travellers.

All TerraPass sales and support of clean energy projects are independently audited by the Center for Resource Solutions, a San Francisco non-profit organisation that runs market surveillance and certification programs in the green power industry.

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