Every day, your employees travel to work by car, bus, train or bike. Your company does not pay for most of these trips, but the GHG Protocol still counts them in your Scope 3, in category 7. To calculate them, you need data from the employees themselves, and a survey rarely reaches everyone.
- Scope 3 category 7, employee commuting: emissions from employees' travel between home and work.
- Remote working: you may also include emissions from working from home.
- Methods: fuel- and distance-based, or average data.
- Reduction: support public transport, cycling, car sharing and remote work.
What does category 7 include?
Category 7 covers emissions from employees' travel to and from work. These emissions can come from:
- travel by car;
- travel by bus;
- travel by train;
- travel by plane;
- other modes of transport, such as the underground, cycling and walking.
You may also include emissions from working from home or teleworking in this category. The GHG Protocol makes this optional.
For which companies does category 7 matter?
This category matters for all companies with many employees who need transport to get to work.
Calculation methods
In category 7, you can use two methods:
- Fuel-based and distance-based method: you collect information from employees on how they travel to work and how far. Then you apply the emission factor for each mode of transport.
- Average-data method: you estimate average commuting emissions from secondary data, for example from commuting surveys by the national statistics office.
Where do you find the data for this category?
Companies should collect their own data on employee commuting, for example with regular employee surveys. Collect this data:
- the distance that employees travel each day, or the location of their home and office;
- the number of days a week that employees use each mode of transport;
- the number of working days in the year;
- for international companies, the region where employees live and work, because transport emission factors differ by region;
- the number of days of working from home or teleworking.
What are the main challenges in category 7?
Two points come up most often:
- To collect the right data, employees need to answer commuting surveys. Getting data from all employees may not be possible.
- Another way is to build a scenario of how employees travel to work.
How to reduce emissions in Scope 3 category 7?
These steps help you cut emissions from commuting:
- Encourage employees to use public transport.
- Pay towards zero-emission transport, such as city bikes or scooters.
- If possible, let employees work from home some days.
- Promote active travel, such as cycling, walking or scooters.
- Help employees find colleagues to share a car to work.
