Enabling Net Zero Carbon Supersonic Flight with Watershed
After achieving carbon neutrality in 2021, Boom Supersonic is focused on its next sustainability milestone: net zero carbon by 2025.
In order to do that, Boom has defined three essential steps:
- Measure the emissions of our entire value chain
- Reduce our carbon output when we see opportunities to do so
- Offset residual emissions that can’t be mitigated by investing in high-impact, high-quality carbon removals
Our partnership with Watershed, the enterprise climate platform, is at the forefront of that strategy, working to help Boom track and mitigate carbon output.
Most recently, Boom Supersonic, along with fellow Watershed customers Canva, SKIMS, and Zendesk, are participating in Frontier, an advance market commitment focused on accelerating permanent carbon removal.
“Boom is committed to building a sustainable supersonic future by driving impact at scale,” said Kathy Savitt, President of Boom Supersonic. “We are participating in the Frontier program through our partnership with Watershed to accelerate permanent carbon removal across industries, taking another step toward our commitment to net zero by 2025.”
But Boom and Watershed’s work doesn’t stop there.
“It all starts with having accurate, granular emissions data,” says Taylor Francis, Co-Founder of Watershed. “If you don’t know where your emissions are coming from, you can’t build an effective strategy for reducing them.
“We give companies like Boom a single, intuitive platform for running end-to-end climate programs—from granular emissions measurement and tracking, to actionable reductions, high-additionality carbon removal, audit-grade reporting, and now our new Supply Chain product.”
A record of success
Boom partnered with Watershed in 2021 for carbon emissions accounting and climate strategy in order to ensure compliance with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG), an organization that sets standards for greenhouse gas emissions. The GHG identifies three types of emissions, or “scopes,” that companies must track:
- Scope 1 emissions – Greenhouse gasses that come directly from things we own or control (like company owned vehicles)
- Scope 2 emissions – Emissions that come from the utilities (electricity, heating, etc.) that we purchase.
- Scope 3 emissions – Upstream/downstream emissions that come from other companies in our supply chain, or that come from customers who use and dispose of our products.
In 2021, 93% of Boom’s carbon output came from Source 3 emissions, as detailed in our 2021 Environmental Sustainability Report.
“Scope 3 emissions typically represent the vast majority of emissions in a company’s footprint, and regulators and investors are increasingly requiring companies to track and report these emissions,” Francis says.
If that sounds tricky, it is, but Watershed has a new tool that streamlines the process.
Tracking Scope 3 emissions with Watershed Supply Chain
Watershed recently introduced a new tool called Watershed Supply Chain, which helps companies like Boom calculate and track Scope 3 emissions. Watershed Supply Chain provides a dashboard where Boom can quickly analyze its overall carbon footprint and work with partners to identify reduction opportunities.
“Getting a handle on your Scope 3 emissions can be really hard,” Francis says. “If you work with a lot of different vendors or suppliers, you need to manually gather data from all of them, which can mean lots of emails back and forth to busy people.
“With Watershed Supply Chain, each supplier gets a dedicated portal where it’s easy to submit their emissions data and understand their role in their partner’s sustainability goals. Watershed then helps you clean, process, and analyze that data to identify emissions hotspots and prioritize vendors to work with on reductions.”
This represents an important evolution in carbon tracking. Measurement, of course, is only the first step in the process of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Enabling partners to take actions to reduce those emissions is, as Francis says, “the most important piece.”
That’s where Watershed brings the most value to Boom.
“Watershed Supply Chain will provide us with a high level of carbon data fidelity, allowing us to make clear and informed decisions around how we action comprehensive decarbonization in lockstep with our suppliers to mutually enable emissions reductions across our supply chain,” says Ben Murphy, Boom’s Vice President of Sustainability.
From carbon neutral to net zero carbon
The next frontier for Boom is to achieve net zero carbon by 2025. We’re well on our way after taking several significant steps in the last year:
- Our agreement with AIR COMPANY will ensure that Overture’s flight test program will run on 100% sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
- A 10-year agreement with Climeworks will help offset our residual emissions by using direct air capture to trap carbon in the atmosphere and store it permanently underground.
- Our 2nd Annual Net Good Summit brought together global sustainability thought leaders to promote net zero travel industry wide.
To stay up to date with our sustainability initiatives, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram, or visit our Sustainability page.
