Why calculate the carbon footprint of your corporate event?
A 100-person seminar can emit as much CO₂ as 15 Paris–New York return flights. Yet the vast majority of corporate events organised in France have never had a carbon assessment. At a time when stakeholders scrutinise CSR commitments with ever greater rigour, this gap is no longer acceptable — strategically or in regulatory terms.
This guide explains why calculating your event’s carbon footprint has become essential, how to do it rigorously with Climeet — the Bilan Carbone®-certified tool and XXL Happyness partner — and what the most committed companies concretely gain from it.
Contents
- Why calculate your event’s carbon footprint?
- What exactly is measured? An event’s emission sources
- Climeet: the only event-certified tool in France and the EU
- The exclusive XXL Happyness offer: your carbon assessment built in from the design stage
- How does it work in practice? The 5-step process
- Real-life cases: what carbon calculation + concrete action can achieve
- What Climeet users say
- Calculating ≠ greenwashing: the conditions for a credible approach
- This applies to every type of event
Why calculate your event’s carbon footprint?
The question is no longer “Should we do it?” but “How and with whom should we do it?”. Here are the four key reasons why this assessment is now essential.
01
Growing regulatory obligation
The BEGES (greenhouse gas emissions assessment) is mandatory for companies with more than 500 employees. The European CSRD directive, applicable from 2025 for large companies, considerably extends environmental reporting obligations to include Scope 3 emissions — which cover events.
02
CSR consistency & brand credibility
An event without a carbon assessment is CSR talk without proof. Publishing a quantified, certified, shareable assessment strengthens your credibility with clients, partners, investors and employees — who pay ever closer attention to the consistency between stated values and actual practice.
03
Informed decisions from the design stage
Calculating upstream — with a tool like Climeet Express — lets you choose the venue, format, mode of transport and suppliers knowing their real carbon impact. You are no longer at the mercy of your footprint: you take control of it.
04
Measurable continuous improvement
What gets measured gets managed. Without a baseline assessment, you cannot know whether your reduction actions are paying off. With an assessment from one edition to the next, you build a genuine event decarbonisation trajectory — and you can prove it.
–59 %
reduction in emissions achieved by MAIF at its AGM in 1 year (via Climeet)
1 kg
CO₂e per participant for the Decathlon event with 55,000 remote participants
<10t
CO₂e for the Groupe VYV AGM (250 participants) thanks to eco-design
What exactly is measured? An event’s emission sources
An event’s carbon footprint covers two dimensions that Climeet integrates natively: the physical dimension (what happens on site) and the digital dimension (streaming, mailings, servers). Here are the main sources:
| Emission source | Dimension | Relative impact | Key reduction lever |
|---|---|---|---|
| Participant travel | Physical | Very high (50–75%) | Key reduction lever |
| Staff & speaker travel | Physical | High | Limit flights, remote speakers |
| Freight & logistics | Physical | Moderate | Local suppliers, consolidated deliveries |
| Accommodation | Physical | Moderate | Holiday parks, twins vs singles |
| Catering | Physical | Moderate | Vegetarian menus, local, zero waste |
| Venue energy | Physical | Moderate | Renewable-energy venue, optimised consumption |
| Design & set-up/dismantling | Physical | Low | Hired staging, recycled materials |
| Goodies & waste | Physical | Low | Cut the gadgets, donate to charities |
| Streaming & digital | Digital | Low | Optimise video quality, targeted mailings |
📌 Key point
In almost every event, participant travel accounts for 50 to 75% of total emissions. This is the lever to act on first — starting with measuring it properly to identify where participants travel from and how.
Climeet: the only event-certified tool in France and the EU
XXL Happyness has chosen Climeet as its technology partner to support the decarbonisation of its clients’ events. This is no casual choice: Climeet is the only internationally recognised tool for calculating GHG emissions at events, in France and across the European Union.
✅ Bilan Carbone® compliant (ABC)
Compliance audit successfully passed on technical framework, process support, methodological transparency and communication.
🌍 GHG Protocol compliant
The international reference protocol for greenhouse gas accounting, used by the world’s most demanding organisations.
🏛️ Institutionally recognised
Partner of ADEME, the Association Bilan Carbone, Greenhouse Gas Protocol and La French Tech Grand Paris, and listed with UGAP for public procurement.
🔬 Robust emission factors
Climeet draws on the best sector databases: ADEME’s Base Empreinte®, Agribalyse, Ecoinvent, IEA, aviation and digital data — continuously updated.
The platform’s key features
Climeet Express — Flash estimate
Estimate your future event’s carbon footprint in minutes, right from the design phase. Get immediate reduction pointers and shareable deliverables.
Complete measurement & management
Intuitive data collection, calculation scope tailored to each type of event (corporate, trade show, festival, sports…), comparative scenarios and real-time reduction tools.
Climeet Provider
Invite your suppliers directly into the platform to enter their emissions data. Dedicated access ensures better data quality and eliminates manual handling.
Reporting & carbon certificate
Exportable report (Excel, PDF, editable PowerPoint), Climeet Index to position your event on an exemplarity scale, and a shareable carbon footprint certificate.
Multi-event analysis
KPI dashboards, merging and comparing events from one edition to the next, long-term decarbonisation strategy. Ideal for organisations running several events a year.
Built-in e-learning
Training module included to raise your teams’ awareness of climate issues, build carbon skills and ease adoption of the solution. Essential for bringing employees on board.
The exclusive XXL Happyness offer: your carbon assessment built in from the design stage
🎁 Exclusive partner offer
Free upfront carbon estimate
As a certified Climeet partner, XXL Happyness builds the carbon approach directly into the design of your event. Nothing to manage separately: we handle the impact calculation from A to Z.
⚡ Free upfront flash estimate
From your brief onwards, we run a Climeet Express estimate of your different scenarios (venue, format, mode of transport). You decide with full knowledge of the facts, before spending a single euro.
🔬 Scenario comparison
Define the objectives, the audience and the purpose before organising anything.
📊 Full post-event carbon assessment
After your event, we produce the full carbon assessment (all emission sources, Climeet Index, exportable report) — a key deliverable for your CSR and CSRD reporting.
📜 Carbon footprint certificate
A concise, certified document, perfectly suited to external communication and the requirements of your stakeholders (management, shareholders, clients, CSR labels).
How does it work in practice? The 5-step process
- Brief & flash estimate (before the event)
From your brief onwards, XXL Happyness uses Climeet Express to estimate your event’s projected carbon footprint in minutes. We compare several scenarios (venue, format, transport) to guide your choices from the design stage. This deliverable is free and shareable. - Data collection from suppliers
Via Climeet Provider, your suppliers (caterer, transport company, technical providers, venue) are invited to enter their emissions data directly into the platform. A smooth, collaborative process with no manual handling on your side. - Real-time calculation & management
As the organisation progresses, the platform calculates the footprint by emission source. Contextualised reduction pointers appear directly in the interface for each source — transport, accommodation, catering, equipment — with their feasibility and estimated impact. - Certified post-event carbon assessment
Once the event is over, we finalise the full assessment with actual data. The report includes: footprint by source, footprint per participant, before/after reduction comparison, Climeet Index (A to G exemplarity scale), and easy-to-grasp equivalences to communicate your results simply. - Communication & continuous improvement
The carbon footprint certificate is a concise, ready-to-share deliverable — LinkedIn, CSR report, internal communication. And from one edition to the next, Climeet data lets you measure the progress of your event decarbonisation trajectory.
Real-life cases: what carbon calculation + concrete action can achieve
MAIF -59% emissions between the 2022 and 2023 AGMs
Annual General Meeting · France
MAIF: a 59% reduction in one year
Since 2022, MAIF has been calculating the emissions of its Annual General Meetings with Climeet, supported by Green Evénements. By taking concrete action on participant mobility, plant-based meals and equipment reuse, the organisation cut its footprint by 59% between the first two measured editions.
💡 Lesson: measuring creates immediate accountability. Knowing what each source weighs is often enough to drive changes that would never have been considered without the assessment.
Decathlon ~1kg CO₂e / participant (55,000 remote)
Reveal Innovation · 1,900 in person + 55,000 remote · Lille
Decathlon: 56,000 participants, minimal footprint
For its internal Reveal Innovation event (a collaborative vote on Decathlon innovations), most of the 55,000 participants took part remotely from their workplace — with no additional travel. Result: a total footprint of around 70 tCO₂e for 56,900 participants, barely more than one kilogram per person.
💡 Lesson: a well-designed hybrid format is one of the most powerful decarbonisation levers, especially for large, geographically dispersed organisations.
Groupe VYV <10T CO₂e for 250 participants (Silver medal)
2023 AGM · LEAD label · Cité Fertile · 2 days
Groupe VYV: silver medal on the Climeet Index
Groupe VYV’s 2023 AGM, organised by the agency Tell Me under the LEAD label, achieved a total footprint of under 10 tCO₂e for 250 participants — thanks to shared shuttles for transfers, eco-designed, largely hired staging, water fountains and zero single-use items.
💡 Lesson: eco-design built in from the brief (rather than corrected at the end) is what makes it possible to reach the lowest emission levels without sacrificing the quality of the experience.
GGVIE 15 events measured in 3 months
Event agency · Climeet rolled out since Nov. 2023
GGVIE: a systematic approach in 90 days
The agency GGVIE rolled out Climeet across all its client events, training 17 employees and reaching 5 daily active users within three months. In 90 days, 15 events were already being measured and managed — proving how quickly the tool can be adopted, even at scale.
💡 Lesson: making carbon measurement a production standard (rather than an option on request) is what sets the leading event agencies apart on the CSR market.
What Climeet users say
Climeet is used by leading organisations such as the Festival de Cannes, LVMH, Stellantis, Bpifrance, Michelin, Decathlon and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Here is some client feedback:
Climeet has been helping us since 2021 to develop and implement our environmental policy on carbon.
Festival de Cannes
The platform is intuitive and clearly visualises the impact of actions through before/after comparisons, which helps measure the reductions achieved.
Groupe VYV
Its ease of use and clear interface allow our teams to use the tool easily on a daily basis and bring our stakeholders on board.
Generali
Climeet ticks a lot of boxes: it’s easy to raise team awareness, easy to get to grips with the tool, and easier to collaborate.
Auditoire
At last, a practical, fast solution for assessing an event’s carbon impact.
EKO l’Événement Durable
We save a huge amount of time with Climeet compared to the tool we used before!
With Up Com
Calculating ≠ greenwashing: the conditions for a credible approach
Measuring an event’s carbon footprint is only credible if certain conditions are met. Here are the essential safeguards:
- Use a certified method. Bilan Carbone® and the GHG Protocol are the two international references. An uncertified tool produces unverifiable results and exposes you to accusations of greenwashing.
- Cover all scopes. Events mainly generate Scope 3 emissions (participant travel, catering, accommodation). Ignoring them would mean measuring only a fraction of the real impact.
- Include suppliers. A carbon assessment without supplier data is approximate. Climeet Provider is designed precisely to integrate each contributor’s data into the final calculation.
- Communicate honestly. Talking about “carbon neutrality” without a proper assessment is misleading. Good reporting sets out the gross carbon footprint, the reduction measures undertaken and the residual emissions that have been offset.
- Aim for reduction before offsetting. Offsetting (tree planting, sequestration projects) must never replace real reduction actions.
✅ The Climeet guarantee
Climeet is the only internationally recognised tool in France and the EU for calculating GHG emissions at events (source: ISE, study by Meegan Jones). Its Bilan Carbone® compliance has been audited and certified by the Association Bilan Carbone (ABC) on four criteria: technical framework, support, methodological transparency and communication.
This applies to every type of event
The carbon approach isn’t just for major international trade shows. Every corporate event generates measurable emissions — and therefore reducible ones. Climeet is designed for every type of event:
🏢
Corporate events
Seminars, conventions, team building, corporate parties, general meetings, product launches. These are the most frequent, and often the most travel-intensive.
🎪
Trade shows & exhibitions
Trade fairs, consumer shows, museum exhibitions. High participant volumes and significant freight make them events with strong decarbonisation potential (see Comexposium).
🎵
Festivals & concerts
The Festival de Cannes has used Climeet since 2021. For these events with very large audiences, the carbon impact per source can be considerable — and communicating the results carries strong image value.
🏛️
Institutional & sporting events
The Buildings and Climate Global Forum (French Ministry of Ecological Transition), sporting events, academic conferences. The LEAD label and CSR certifications now require a carbon assessment.
Your next event
can lead by example
Free carbon estimate from your brief, certified carbon assessment after your event, shareable certificate and turnkey CSR report. Entrust us with your event — we’ll manage its climate impact with you.