Business travel occurs when people from your organisation travel from one place of work to another place of work as part of their work duties.
This help page describes M&R methodology for business travel. For step-by-step guidance on how to report data into the software system see the help page for the business travel data input screen.
Business travel includes travel to a place that is not a normal place of work. It does not include travel to and from a person’s normal place of work, i.e. commuting. This is a person’s own private travel and is not a business journey. Additional information on what constitutes business travel is available from the Revenue website.
Business travel excludes any travel journeys for which the public body reports the relevant energy consumption as part of your organisation’s energy consumption.
Business travel generally involves travel by persons that have an employee-employer relationship with your organisation.
The following are also considered to be business travel reportable by your organisation (if relevant):
Business travel generally excludes travel by persons that do not have an employee-employer relationship with your organisation, including independent or self-employed contractors.
Business travel includes relevant travel by all modes, including private road vehicles, vehicles hired by staff, commercial flights, bus, rail, taxis and ferries.
Business travel includes travel within Ireland, travel to/from Ireland, and travel outside Ireland.
SEAI recognises that your organisation may find it difficult to collate some data for travel outside Ireland and that calculation methodologies established for Ireland’s transport network may not be appropriate for other jurisdictions. There is also a trade-off between the level of effort required to gather some data and the scale of the emissions. For these reasons, the scope of business travel reportable to SEAI is limited to:
All public bodies have been required to report annual data on business travel to SEAI since 2022 (2021 data). The requirement to report data for business travel was originally set out in the 2021 Climate Action Plan. Up until 2023 (2022 data), this data was submitted via spreadsheet to SEAI.
There are three categories of data that must be reported for business travel:
Business travel by private road vehicle generally involves travel in a privately owned vehicle for which an individual is reimbursed by the public body on a per-km basis (aka ‘mileage’).
The following are also considered to be included in the scope of business travel by private road vehicle:
The following are excluded from the scope of business travel by private road vehicle and should not be reported as such:
You should report business travel by private road vehicle as the total distance travelled in a year, in kilometres (km), by vehicle type:
For business travel by car (internal combustion engines), you must report the total km travelled in each year, broken down by engine size:
This subcategory includes all cars and light commercial vehicles powered by engines based on petrol, diesel, hybrid, plug-in hybrid or LPG technologies. It excludes fully electric vehicles.
For business travel by car (electric vehicles), you must report the total km travelled in each year by fully electric vehicles. This category includes battery electric vehicles (BEV), fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEV) and zero emission vehicles (ZEV). It excludes hybrids and plug-in hybrids.
If the distance travelled by electric vehicles is unknown, then it can be included in the subtotal reported for cars of unknown engine size.
For business travel by motorcycle, public bodies must report the total km travelled in each year by, broken down by engine size:
If more than one person travels in the same vehicle on the same journey, the journey distance should be counted once, e.g. if 3 people travel together in the same car for 150 km, the distance should be counted as 1 x 150 km = 150 km.
This category of business travel involves business travel by commercial airline. It includes:
You should report business travel via commercial flights as a list of flight segments. If a journey comprises multiple segments, then each segment must be reported separately.
For example, if a person flies from Dublin to Singapore via Frankfurt, then the Dublin-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-Singapore legs should be reported as separate segments. This applies whether the segments are connecting flights or not.
You must report the following data for each flight segment:
You can also optionally report the CO2 emissions arising from each flight segment, in kgCO2. The values reported for this parameter are not used in the calculation of your organisation's emissions from commercial flights. Instead, SEAI calculates the CO2 emissions from the mandatory data reported for each segment and it is this SEAI-calculated value that is counted when determining public bodies’ greenhouse gas emissions from the segment. Values reported by you can be used for comparison purposes with the SEAI-calculated value.
If more than one person travels on the same flight segment, the segment should be counted separately for each passenger. For example, if 3 people fly from Dublin to Frankfurt, this should be counted as three flights/segments.
This category of business travel generally involves business travel on public transport services. It includes:
The following are excluded from the scope of business travel by commercial & public transport and should not be reported as such:
Business travel by commercial & public transport is reported as total distance travelled in a year, in passenger-kilometres (passenger.km), by mode of transport:
You can also optionally report data for active mobility.
For commercial & public transport by road, you must report the total passenger.km travelled in each year, broken down by vehicle type:
For commercial & public transport by rail, public bodies must report the total passenger.km travelled in each year, broken down by type:
For commercial & public transport by ferry, public bodies must report the total passenger.km travelled in each year, broken down by type:
This subcategory includes all ferry types, including sea ferries, island ferries and river ferries.
If more than one person travels in the same vehicle on the same journey, the journey distance should be counted separately for each passenger. For example, if 3 people take a 150-km train journey together, the distance should be counted as 3 x 150 km = 450 passenger.km.
You can also optionally report travel data (passenger.km) in each year for active mobility, broken down by type:
This functionality is provided for your own purposes. SEAI does not envisage using data reported for active mobility for calculating emissions arising from business travel.
There is a trade-off between the level of effort required to gather passenger.km data for travel by bus, taxi, rail and ferry, and the value of the data. You should focus on gathering robust data for the modes of travel by commercial and public transport that are likely to be most material to your organisation's emissions from business travel. If necessary, you can estimate distances travelled for modes that are less material to your organisation and/or where robust data is unavailable. You must retain a record of the basis for all estimates, including relevant assumptions and calculations.