For decades, corporate travel departments have managed one number above all others: money. Employees could fly to a conference, visit a client, or bring a remote team together as long as the trip fit the company’s financial rules and someone was willing to pay for it. Increasingly, companies are adding another number to the equation: the greenhouse gas emissions created by the journey.
That shift could eventually make a carbon allowance feel almost as familiar as a dollar travel budget. Instead of asking only whether a department has enough money left for another round of flights, managers may also have to consider whether it has enough emissions capacity. The idea is not yet standard corporate practice, but research from Deloitte suggests it is moving rapidly into the mainstream.
The Travel Budget Is Getting A Second Bottom Line
Deloitte’s 2024 corporate travel study found that 46% of surveyed travel managers said their companies had a strategy for assigning travel-emissions budgets to teams or individuals. That was up from 30% in 2023. The survey covered 104 U.S.-based corporate travel managers and executives with travel-budget responsibilities, so it does not mean nearly half of all companies worldwide have carbon budgets, but it does show how quickly the concept has entered corporate travel planning.
A carbon budget works much like a financial budget. A company establishes an emissions target, calculates how much business travel can fit inside it, and then allocates some portion of that allowance to departments, projects, offices, or employees. A sales team that flies frequently might receive a larger allocation than an administrative group that rarely travels, while managers can monitor whether actual emissions are running above or below plan.
The idea is becoming more relevant because sustainability commitments are increasingly influencing corporate travel. In Deloitte’s 2025 travel study, 48% of travel managers surveyed cited sustainability commitments among the top three factors restricting travel. The share saying their organization needed to reduce travel by at least 20% to meet emissions targets rose to 45%, compared with 24% the previous year.
Those numbers suggest companies may increasingly face a problem familiar to anyone who has managed a financial budget. An organization can have ambitious annual targets on paper, but those targets do little if individual departments have no idea how their decisions affect them. Carbon budgets attempt to push responsibility closer to the employees and managers actually authorizing trips.
Every Trip Could Start Carrying A Carbon Price Tag
Making that system work requires companies to know how much carbon a trip creates. Aviation emissions calculations can consider factors including fuel consumption, passenger and cargo weight, cabin configuration, and class of service. IATA has developed a per-passenger CO2 methodology intended for airlines, travel agencies, booking systems, corporate travel management companies, and other organizations that need comparable flight-emissions information.
The practical result is that emissions information can increasingly sit beside the familiar price and schedule data employees already see when booking travel. A traveler choosing between two flights might therefore see not just a difference in airfare or departure time, but a difference in estimated emissions. Companies can then build travel policies around those calculations instead of relying on vague instructions to “travel sustainably.”
Corporate travel technology is already being designed around that idea. Clarasight, for example, offers a carbon-planning platform through the SAP Concur App Center that allows companies to set carbon budgets and carbon prices, monitor performance against targets, and model how different travel policies could affect emissions. Its tools are also designed to combine travel, expense, and emissions information into a common planning system.
That kind of integration matters because sustainability rules are much easier to follow when they appear during the booking process. Asking employees to independently research the carbon impact of several flights before purchasing a ticket adds friction to a process that can already be complicated. Showing the information automatically allows the company’s priorities to become part of the same decision employees make about price, timing, and convenience.
A Carbon Budget Does Not Necessarily Mean A Travel Ban
The obvious concern for business travelers is that a carbon budget could become another way of saying no. Companies under pressure to reduce emissions may indeed decide that some trips are unnecessary. Deloitte’s 2025 research found that nearly half of surveyed travel managers said their companies were optimizing travel practices to reduce environmental impact.
Yet the concept does not require eliminating business travel altogether. A company can instead decide which trips deliver enough value to justify their emissions. An important client meeting, factory inspection, sales presentation, or team gathering may still receive approval, while a routine internal meeting that can be handled effectively by video may not.
Companies can also reduce emissions without reducing every trip. Accenture says it uses analytics to help business travelers and managers estimate travel and choose less carbon-intensive options. Its policies encourage rail instead of air travel where practical, while an aviation carbon calculator shows employees differences in emissions between flights.
That approach could change how employees think about travel planning. A department approaching its annual carbon limit might decide to send two people to a conference instead of six. Employees traveling between nearby cities might take a train rather than fly. Several meetings might be consolidated into one longer trip instead of requiring multiple return flights.
In that sense, a carbon budget can become a tool for prioritization rather than prohibition. Financial budgets already force managers to decide which trips are worth the expense. Carbon budgets simply introduce another scarce resource that has to be allocated.
Companies Are Experimenting With More Than One Model
There is no single blueprint for managing travel emissions. Some organizations may give departments explicit carbon allowances, while others can attach an internal financial cost to emissions. Microsoft has used an internal carbon fee since 2012, originally applying it to areas including business air travel and charging internal business groups based on the emissions they generate. The company later expanded the system to additional Scope 3 emissions.
The underlying principle is similar to a traditional budget. When a department bears some responsibility for the consequences of its decisions, managers have an incentive to scrutinize those decisions more carefully. Microsoft has described its carbon fee as a mechanism for encouraging emissions reductions while raising money for carbon-reduction and removal initiatives.
Other companies may focus more heavily on changing the carbon intensity of the trips that remain. Sustainable aviation fuel, commonly known as SAF, is one option attracting corporate interest. IATA says the most common SAF pathway today typically offers lifecycle emissions reductions of around 80% compared with conventional jet fuel, although the exact reduction depends on the feedstock and production process.
Companies do not necessarily need SAF to be physically loaded onto the aircraft carrying their employees. Book-and-claim systems separate the environmental attributes of SAF from the physical fuel, allowing organizations to financially support SAF use elsewhere in the aviation network while claiming the associated environmental benefit under an accounting framework designed to prevent double counting. IATA says such systems can help create a wider market for SAF despite limited production locations.
That creates several levers for a corporate travel manager. Reduce unnecessary trips. Move suitable journeys from air to rail. Choose lower-emission flight options where available. Purchase SAF attributes for unavoidable aviation. A carbon budget provides the measurement framework connecting those individual decisions to a larger corporate goal.
Your Next Trip May Have Two Budgets To Meet
For travelers, the most noticeable change may eventually appear at the moment of booking. A flight that satisfies the company’s financial policy might still be discouraged because of its emissions. A slightly more expensive itinerary could occasionally make sense if it produces substantially less carbon and helps a department remain within its annual target.
Companies will still have difficult trade-offs to make. Business travel exists because meeting customers, visiting operations, attending events, and bringing colleagues together can create genuine business value. Carbon targets do not make those benefits disappear, just as rising airfares do not automatically make every flight unjustifiable.
The real challenge is measurement. Deloitte’s 2024 research found that companies still cited better data and stronger evidence about environmental impact among the things they needed before sustainability metrics could play a larger role in travel programs. Different emissions methodologies can also produce different numbers, making consistency especially important when companies compare routes, suppliers, or departments.
Still, the direction of travel is becoming clearer. Corporate travel programs already manage airfare caps, preferred hotels, approval rules, cabin-class policies, and departmental spending limits. Adding carbon to that list is no longer an abstract sustainability exercise.
The traditional question before a business trip has always been, “Can we afford it?” Increasingly, the next question may be, “Can we afford the emissions too?”
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