EventDecision Founder Matt Grey shares why its more important than ever for event professionals to measure and report event carbon emissions, and how his new business venture can help…

On 25^th January this year, EY announced its ambition to be carbon negative in 2021, setting targets to significantly reduce its absolute emissions, and removing and offsetting more carbon than it emits.

Soon afterwards on 4^th March, SAP announced its intention to become carbon-neutral in its own operations by the end of 2023 – two years earlier than it had previously hoped.

Brands are starting to take the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that’s fully supported by the UK government to their hearts. With corporate giants of this calibre announcing accelerations of their sustainability plans, it’s inevitable that other businesses across all sectors and sizes will continue to follow suit.

As a result, associations, corporate businesses and public sector bodies are scrutinising event sustainability for alignment with their firmly embedded sustainability strategies.

The past 14 months has caused particular turmoil and uncertainty in the events and hospitality sectors. But it’s not all bad moving forwards, with demand for live and hybrid events seeing a cautious but optimistic reignition.

In-house planners, agencies and venues now have a much broader spectrum of event platforms available to them, providing greater access and wider reach than more traditional in-person events.

Whilst planners become more familiar with what the term “hybrid” means in practice, many are using the opportunity to focus on the sustainability of events. The ability to measure and report event carbon emissions or equivalents with meaningful results is more important than it’s ever been.

Even at planning stage, when organisers are considering potential host destinations and venues, the means to compare emissions footprints of destinations and venues is crucial for supporting overall business goals. Planners are able to make better decisions.

The ability to plan for lower event emissions and measure them as the event delivers, comparing the results to previous events, is game changing for the organisations that have been asking agencies and venues for this sort of data for years.

You can also compare the emissions footprint of previously live events and against hybrid formats going forward. This is a valuable service in itself and agencies can see the competitive advantage available in offering this as part of their portfolio.

Robust, transparent and certifiable measurement & reporting marks the advent of meaningful data that has previously been missing and is now available through EventDecision.

In addition, it’s a welcome opportunity to deliver real-time sustainability savings. We’re at the start of a new era in event planning.