Overview
Each Carbonwise Case Study focuses on a single organisation, examining how it engages with carbon markets. The series presents real-world insights into:
- The sources of an organisation’s emissions
- How it uses carbon markets to support its climate and sustainability goals
- The advantages of participating in the carbon market
About the organisation: Airbnb
Airbnb is a San Francisco-headquartered publicly-listed American company operating an online marketplace for lodgings. The company allows holiday-makers to stay in a broader range of accommodation than may have previously been on offer, and allows property owners a chance to earn revenue by providing their accommodation for short-term lets. The company employs just over 8,000 people worldwide and earned a revenue of $12.2 billion in 2025.
Summary of the company’s emissions
Airbnb’s direct greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from its own offices, while indirect emissions come from the energy it consumes, and from upstream and downstream activities associated with its business, such as emissions embedded in the goods and services that it uses.
Taking a closer look, and based on Airbnb’s 2025 Sustainability Update, its reported GHG emissions for the year 2024 can be quantified as follows:
Scope 1 emissions (from own direct sources): stationary sources of combustion such as natural gas, oil, coal, biofuels and refrigerants: 1,295 metric tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
Scope 2 emissions (from generation of energy purchased and consumed): 5,180 tonnes CO2e.
Scope 3 emissions (from all other sources, including upstream and downstream supply chain activities): 395,330 tonnes CO2e.
As the above figures clearly show, by far the largest share of Airbnb’s emissions come from outside its own direct control (Scope 3).
Climate targets and frameworks
In 2021, Airbnb set a corporate target to become a net zero emissions company by 2030.
“This means that by the end of 2030, we plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with our global corporate operations and invest in solutions to offset residual emissions from those operations through carbon credits,” the company said in the report.
In 2022, the company set emissions reduction targets that were approved under the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) sustainability framework. The company has set a baseline year of 2019 to measure its progress against its SBTi targets.
Progress on targets
Airbnb says it is currently on track to meet its 2030 corporate net zero and SBTi goals, and that its growth continues to be carbon efficient. While the company has experienced significant revenue growth since 2019, its emissions have not increased significantly, it said.
Airbnb’s 2024 absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions were approximately 82% below its 2019 baseline. To neutralise these emissions, it matched its office electricity use with 100% renewable energy purchases.
For example, its offices in San Francisco and Dublin were powered by 100% renewable electricity from California wind and solar and Irish wind. The company also purchased and retired Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) for the remainder of its corporate office footprint, matching 100% of its total electricity consumption in 2024.
EACs are generated when a power company generates energy from renewable sources, and each credit can only be bought and claimed by one user. By buying and retiring enough EACs to match its electricity consumption, a company can claim that a percentage (or all) of its electricity helped to support clean energy, even if the actual electricity used came from various sources that were fed into the grid. This is an effective way to address Scope 2 emissions (from energy bought and used).
In addition, the company addressed the emissions associated with employees working from home through the purchase and retirement of additional Energy Attribute Certificates, even though this was not required under its chosen reporting standard.
“Airbnb continued to invest in environmental sustainability projects and partnerships in cities around the world, including projects that aim to protect or restore urban areas in the United States, urban greening initiatives in Germany, and wetland restoration for coastal resilience in Brazil,” it said.
As well as sourcing renewable power, the company has prioritised improving energy efficiency in its offices and it undertook energy audits to support this goal, carrying out upgrades in San Francisco and Dublin to improve energy efficiency.
Scope 3 emissions
Airbnb’s Scope 3 emissions mainly come from the goods and services that it obtains from its suppliers, such as marketing, customer support, payment processing and cloud services. To address these emissions, the company has established a sustainability program which engages suppliers to commit to measure, report and reduce their GHG emissions.
Carbon credits
Airbnb has established a carbon credits program, which involves buying credits that deliver positive impact while mitigating emissions. The company prioritises nature-based projects, and where possible seeks opportunities to support projects near the cities and towns where their hosts and guests live. This aims to help improve the quality of life and increase climate resilience for communities.
In general, buying carbon credits for use as offsets means reducing or avoiding emissions from a project outside a company’s own operations or value chain. By doing this, the company can address sources of its own emissions that it has not yet been able to reduce or eliminate, effectively making them carbon-neutral.
By focusing on high-quality nature-based projects in particular, Airbnb has sought an approach that may enable people to more easily link forests and ecosystem preservation with the company’s 2030 climate goals. Nature-based projects can be cost-effective and scalable, but also include additional co-benefits that go beyond carbon reductions, such as enhanced biodiversity.
That said, some nature-based projects, for example some avoided deforestation projects, have run into accusations over their environmental integrity. For example, some projects have been criticised for using inflated baselines against which to measure the avoided emissions, or that involve emissions reductions that may not be additional or permanent.
Airbnb runs every project through a due diligence process and aims to select projects that provide co-benefits, such as improved biodiversity, economic development or improved community services and infrastructure, as well as key criteria such as additionality, permanence, adherence to third-party standards and ongoing monitoring.
For example, in 2024 Airbnb made investments to support projects to improve forestry management in northern California, restore forests owned by rural communities in Mexico and protect coastal forests in Guatemala.
In addition, the company has committed $100 million to two climate funds that invest in forest projects in the US, Latin America, Africa and Asia. These projects are expected to remove GHGs from the atmosphere or reduce emissions compared to baseline activity, as well as increase biodiversity and reduce water consumption, while delivering high quality carbon credits to Airbnb.
Airbnb engaged the services of accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to produce its sustainability report.
Summary
In summary, Airbnb has made use of a well-known sustainability reporting framework, the Science-Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) to set credible corporate climate and sustainability targets. It has also made use of energy efficiency improvements to reduce its direct emissions and those from its energy consumption, and purchased Energy Attribute Certificates (EACs) to demonstrate the use of renewable energy.
To address emissions that it has not yet been able to reduce, Airbnb has turned to carbon markets, buying carbon credits from nature-based projects that lie outside its own value chain. In this way, the company is using carbon markets alongside, rather than instead of, direct reductions in its own emissions.
By taking these actions, Airbnb has been able to reduce its environmental footprint and demonstrate progress toward its corporate net zero target for 2030. Potential benefits include reduced operational costs, enhanced brand reputation and increased guest loyalty, with additional benefits such as lower energy bills for hosts and encouraging more sustainable practices for its guests.
For companies that are starting out on their sustainability journey, Airbnb provides a useful reference point that highlights some of the actions that can be taken to help set and make progress towards a credible corporate climate target. Carbon market mechanisms have a clear role to play within this wider sustainability drive.
Why do this? There are many potential benefits. By embedding sustainability into core strategy, companies can reduce operational costs, attract investment, mitigate environmental regulatory risks, enhance brand reputation and increase talent attraction and employee engagement, among others.
In a general sense, carbon pricing continues to spread around the world as the urgency to mitigate climate change increases.
And in particular, this example shows how companies use the voluntary carbon market to address emissions that cannot yet be reduced directly. As carbon pricing continues to expand globally, understanding how to use these tools effectively is becoming increasingly important for companies across multiple sectors.
