2022 U.S.-Booked Air Volume: $115 million
Consolidated U.S. TMC: Amex GBT

Travel at Boston Consulting Group returned in a big way in 2022, with U.S.-booked air volume increasing more than seven-fold to $115 million, up from $15 million the year prior, according to BTN estimates.  

The sharp uptick follows the firm’s 2022 acquisition of environmental sustainability consultancy Quantis, which saw BCG’s global workforce increase to 30,000.

As a result, the firm’s absolute carbon emissions increased in 2022 compared to the previous year, due mainly to the return of business travel—its largest source of emissions. However, BCG now appears to be doubling down on its commitments to reduce Scope 3 business travel emissions by 48.5 percent per full-time equivalent employee by 2025 (against a 2018 baseline). This includes emissions from flights, hotel nights, rail, rental cars and taxis.

Notably, the firm has introduced internal reporting dashboards that include a carbon budgeting feature to monitor individual and project-based travel emissions. To further reduce its travel footprint, the company is also incentivizing an air-to-rail shift among travelers and has set rail as a default choice on viable routes in its travel booking tool.

In 2022, BCG accelerated the roll-out of hybrid and remote project team models and introduced new policies for internal meetings and global events that allow for changes in event formats and locations to in order to reduce emissions. BCG also launched a new tool to help event organizers identify meeting locations that will generate the smallest quantity of emissions, based on attendees’ locations.