Sustainability challenge and related SDGs
Business trips to clients, meetings, conferences or congresses are part of the culture in many industries. The problem is:
- more trips are being made by employees on business travel than by the average holidaymaker.
- most business trips are made by plane or car.
As a result, employee travel - at 445 million business trips annually - is one of the largest contributors to carbon emissions in the business world.
Larger conferences illustrate the impact of business travel: A three-day conference with 800 participants produces an average of 455 tonnes of CO2 equivalents, in addition to a generally wasteful consumption of resources.
These are due to:
• Travel to and from the conference by car, plane or train
• Preparations (e.g., printing activities, procuring souvenirs and disposable items)
• Catering with food and drinks
• Disposal of solid waste (paper flipcharts, signage, name badges) and organic waste
In view of the current climate crisis, the increasing waste of resources and environmental pollution, solutions must be found to avoid unnecessary trips, which can also be held virtually.
Possible solutions and their contribution to achieving the SDGs
The lockdown due to the COVID 19 pandemic saved the world a lot of greenhouse gases by eliminating transport, and it showed that virtual and hybrid meetings could successfully replace face-to-face events on the other. For example, holding a professional conference entirely online reduces its carbon footprint by 94%, and switching to a hybrid model where no more than half of the participants are online reduces the carbon footprint by 67%.
Companies providing solutions to #AvoidTravel enable virtual and hybrid meetings for everyday use. They offer communication platforms as a service, for example telepresence video conferencing systems, cloud services and other communication services. Through their communication technology, transport-related CO2 emissions can be saved in the future, which contributes to goal SDG 13 "Measures for climate protection".
Primarily related SDG Targets: 7.1.2, 7.3.1, 13.b
Investment Rationale and Growth Potential
The global COVID-19 pandemic has opened a new chapter in digitalisation: Remote work and videoconferencing will be here to stay and demand for telecommunication services is increasing. At the same time, additional fibre and wireless connections are building the network capacities of the future.
In future, time spent in virtual meetings will double in the daily workflow, taking up to a third of meetings. For business events, they will be an integral part of the new normal. This trend gives investors investment opportunities in the telecommunications technology sector.
