Helping Harvard Business School offset travel emissions with high-quality credits

Harvard Business School is a leading private university with strong commitments to climate, environment, health and equity.

The challenge

Harvard’s Sustainability Action Plan focuses on climate, health and equity. The plan includes the goals of being fossil fuel neutral by 2026 and fossil fuel free by 2050 for emissions from campus energy use and vehicles (Scope 1 and 2 emissions). Harvard uses the term “fossil fuel” to emphasize the health consequences from fossil fuel pollution that disproportionately impact low-income communities and communities of color. In addition to the Scope 1 and 2 targets, the plan includes objectives to reduce Scope 3 emissions from travel (with an emphasis on air travel) and supply chain.

Given these goals, HBS was interested in offsetting a portion of required student academic travel and providing HBS travelers an option to offset their own emissions. Due to the complex nature of carbon credits and the recent questions surrounding their reliability, the challenge was deciding how to identify high-quality credits that would also provide health and equity benefits.

How Calyx Global helped

To help them understand and identify quality, Harvard Business School subscribed to the Calyx Global Platform. The platform enables the Business School team to dive into the details of over 500 carbon projects and have the assurance that evaluations of their risks and benefits were conducted using a framework developed by world-leading carbon market experts. They also received consultation from our experts on different types of carbon credits, including their GHG integrity risks and their Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) benefits.

In considering criteria for carbon credits, the school prioritized high GHG impact and health (which ties to equity). To identify carbon credits to offset a portion of the student academic travel emissions, the carbon credits were filtered for the HBS criteria for high GHG ratings and health related SDG goals. However, it is difficult in today’s market to find credits with both high GHG integrity and strong health benefits, even amongst Calyx Global’s 500+ rated projects. Harvard Business School’s solution was to combine credits that received the highest (A+) rating with those that achieved a “B” rating, but provided health and equity benefits.

Calyx Global also helped HBS find carbon credit platforms that could offer portfolios of carbon credits consistent with HBS’s goals, including meeting a minimum Calyx Global rating threshold. HBS turned to CNaught to curate a portfolio that managed risk while meeting high standards and criteria on climate, health and equity. CNaught also built an easy-to-use travel tool that enabled HBS travelers to calculate and offset their travel emissions with ease.           

The results

Harvard Business School has calculated scope 3 emissions and offset a portion of travel-related academic student emissions with high-quality credits they can be confident in. As part of its carbon credit strategy, the school is also making additional progress toward its health and equity priorities with the credits’ SDG contributions. In addition, HBS is extending its ability to help facilitate impact by offering a travel offsetting recommendation via CNaught to Harvard travelers of all sorts.      

Interested in discovering high-quality credits that make contributions to beyond carbon goals? Request a demo of the Calyx Global platform.