Lufthansa has developed a sustainability marketplace for the travel and transport industry as part of its innovation hub.
The new venture, which is called Squake, has been in development for the past nine months.
It offers a CO2 compensation platform enabling travel and transport companies to choose sustainability initiatives from a bank from partners and projects.
The business-to-business platform calculates CO2 emissions of trips and offers ways for them to be offset within the booking process.
Squake offers companies enables companies to integrate the offset schemes in the booking path via its APIs.
The platform is free for sustainability businesses to sign up to and Squake is charging a 10% fee on every transaction made by the customers of the travel businesses using it.
Dan Kreibich, who is leading the project within the Lufthansa Innovation Hub (LIH), says the plan is to spin off Squake as a separate company in the near future.
Kreibich, who is also the founder of another sustainability project in the hub called Compensaid, says Lufthansa brings the business perspective to the startup through its background in travel and logisitics as well as sustainability solutions.
He adds that Squake is trying to focus on innovative sustainability solutions and has more than 70 projects in the marketplace at launch.
Christine Wang, managing director of LIH, says it’s a good time for the initiative as there is pressure from all sides to become greener.
She adds that while there is a realization that it takes time there is an opportunity for Squake to help educate the industry, make it more transparent and offer ways to reduce carbon emissions over the next few years.
“We’re really trying to decarbonise everyone in the entire supply and travel chain and that’s a really grand vision which is why I’m excited about it. When you dial it down a little bit, it’s really about building the green backbone for each company in taht segment.”
LIH recently spun off its mobility startup Rydes with Porsche acquiring a stake in the business.