In 2014 Virgin Atlantic partnered with Harvard to reduce their emissions. How? Well, this wasn't about directly optimizing the performance of their hardware through machinery upgrades - that's an ongoing process. They were looking for ways to decarbonise through changes to employee behaviour.

The airline monitored 335 chosen captains across 40,000 flights during an eight month period. Significantly, only a portion of the captains were informed of the nature and purpose of the ongoing analysis.

Virgin/Harvard found that the pilots who were told that their fuel performance was being monitored massively improved their flight efficiency. Just by making fuel efficiency a personal responsibility of the pilots and a measurable part of their performance review, the airline was able to achieve substantial improvements without the need for any major new technologies.

Just in the eight-month sub-sample who changed their behaviour, Virgin saved around 21,000 tons of CO2 and saved over $5m in fuel costs during the eight month study.

Cambridge Climate consulting helps businesses to benchmark their emissions, then devise a roadmap that empowers employees to help decarbonise the business. Get in touch for more details.

Case Study reference: Harvard Business Review/Virgin Atlantic