Cornerstone Information Systems, a technology and professional services company serving the travel industry, has announced their iBank Reporting application which captures travel details for customers to analyze their travel spend now includes five new CO2 calculations. They are: * Air CO2 Emissions – estimates the number of lbs or kgs emitted during a flight. *…
Cornerstone offers carbon reporting
Cornerstone Information Systems, a technology and professional services company serving the travel industry, has announced their iBank Reporting application which captures travel details for customers to analyze their travel spend now includes five new CO2 calculations.
They are:
* Air CO2 Emissions – estimates the number of lbs or kgs emitted during a flight.
* Alternate Car CO2 Emissions – estimates the carbon emissions generated if the traveler chose to travel by car instead of airplane.
* Alternate Rail CO2 Emissions – estimates the carbon emissions generated if the traveler chose to travel by train instead of airplane.
* Car Rental CO2 Emissions – estimates the carbon emissions generated if the traveler chose to travel by rental car.
* Hotel Booking CO2 Emissions – estimates the carbon emissions generated by the traveler for each booked hotel night.
Cornerstone utilizes the proprietary algorithms of several carbon reporting companies including; TerraPass, greenboard technology and The CarbonNeutral Company to create these new calculations. The algorithms are then applied to a corporation’s travel data to produce estimates of the carbon output from travelers’ trips. A new set of carbon reports has been added to the 122 existing reports in iBank and are now part of the standard offering for all new iBank users. Current iBank customers have received the new carbon reporting capabilities automatically at no additional cost.
“An increasing number of our customers are managing their global travel data within the iBank platform and we recognized the need to provide these capabilities within the iBank,” said Mat Orrego, President and CEO of Cornerstone. “A key differentiator in our carbon reporting capabilities is that we enable a customer to use multiple carbon calculators based on their unique customer demands. We are committed to incorporating the most accurate and beneficial measurement standards in order to help our customers meet regulatory requirements while minimizing their cost of compliance,” continued Orrego.
“The flexibility built by Cornerstone allows our clients to choose the calculation most relevant to them as there is no ‘set’ industry or global standard for carbon reporting. This makes the reporting significantly more practical and effective.” Said Chriss Macaranas, Global Reporting Leader for FCm Travel Solutions
Cornerstone’s carbon reports can be used “as-is” or the iBank customer can use Cornerstone’s proprietary data distribution methodology to export the travel data in iBank to a carbon calculation firm for more comprehensive analysis. Cornerstone has designed the carbon reporting capabilities in iBank to incorporate different calculation methodologies as new carbon reporting standards become more widely accepted.
Sue Welland, Founder & Creative Director of the leading, global carbon offset and management company, The CarbonNeutral Company, said “Often over 25% of a company’s carbon footprint can be attributed to travel. Reducing those emissions makes good business sense – for the climate, for the balance sheet and for reputation. Carbon management is increasingly part of the corporate strategy; innovative reporting systems such as iBank provide companies with the ability to analyze their CO2 emissions of their travel plans and to reduce this internally through change of business processes and operations as well as externally through carbon offsetting.”
iBank is Cornerstone’s web-based data management platform that captures travel data from a variety of sources, including GDSs, credit card feeds and back-office systems and provides customers the ability to analyze their travel spend from a customized web site. In 2008, iBank captured 300 million records and processed 3.6 million reports, 75% of which were broadcast automatically. Over 11,000 users logged into the system more than 1.1 million times.
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