CARBON LABELLING OF HOLIDAY TRAVEL

Stephen Kinsella 21 11 07

This document describes two alternative carbon labelling systems for holiday travel. I call these Full Labelling and Abbreviated Labelling.


1 CO2 Emission

The range of CO2 emissions from holidays and tours is very large, from zero to nearly 8 Tonnes for a return flight to Australia. The data sources for the calculations are noted in the appendix.

2 Criteria for tour selection

The purpose of the labels is to enable people to judge the relative merits of tours in terms of impact of the tour on global warming. The labels should give information which enables them to make a choice based on how they judge their own responsibility and circumstances.

I have therefore devised a simple method of relating the CO2 emitted from each tour to the total “sustainable CO2 allowance”, the amount of carbon dioxide per person that the planet is capable of absorbing without increasing the CO2 in the atmosphere to a dangerous level. This is 2 Tonnes per person per year. Note that this amount comes from all types of energy use - heating, infrastructure, etc, as well as travel, that create each person’s carbon footprint. I have made a judgement that 15% of this 2 Tonnes could reasonably be taken for an annual holiday, leaving the remaining part of the 2 Tonnes for all the other sources of CO2 in a sustainable carbon footprint.

I then calculate how frequently it would be possible to travel over the range of tours, within the sustainable footprint. For instance a holiday emitting 30% of one’s total annual allowance is 2 years’ of the normal allowance, so one could take the holiday every 2 years:




1 Labels

The standard eco-labels used for domestic appliances and cars are the range A to G as above. These labels indicate the relative efficiency of the appliance, and are applied so as to cover the range of efficiencies on the market. There is no necessity to use these labels but they have the possible merit of familiarity. I have extended the range by two further indices GG and GGG, so as to cover the wide range of carbon dioxide emission from tours in reasonable steps. The “warming planet” symbols are a more graphic indicator.


Full labelling
The full labelling system uses the A to GGG range as above. A key to the labels in the brochure could omit the % column as follows:



Abbreviated labelling

The abbreviated labels use the globe symbols alone, omitting the indicators A-GGG.
The description in the brochure could be on the following lines:

How to choose

Green globe If you join the tour by cycling from home or use the means of travel shown, you can happily do these tours yearly or more often. The powered travel element takes less than 10% of all the CO2 in a year’s sustainable lifestyle.

Brown globe Taking up to 35% of your total allowable CO2 in a year, you can achieve these if they are 1 to 3 yearly events.

Orange globe These take up to a whole years’ worth of sustainable carbon dioxide emission. To get in credit for these, you need to cut out high carbon travelling for between 3 and 7 years, (perhaps less if you live an ultra green lifestyle).

Red globe. These have a very high global warming impact. To be in the running for these tours with environmental integrity you will probably now be treating air travel as a once in a life-time event for the longest distances.



Travelling to holiday destinations or to join walking or cycling tours:

Brochures could contain a summary like this:

The CO2 emission figures per person have been calculated from London. You need to also consider the extra distance from your home.

Coach - Long distance coach travel has the lowest CO2 emissions of any mechanically powered mass transport.

Train - For tours within Europe you will most likely be able to travel by train. See http://www.seat61.com for more information, or in Europe the German rail guide http://bahn.hafas.de

Car - CO2 per person has been calculated assuming two people travelling together in a medium sized petrol car. If you drive by yourself remember the impact will be doubled.

Ferry - Data on shipping is limited but present indications are that shipping creates high emissions, largely because of poor quality fuel.

Air – High speed means high carbon. The best jet plane has the same effect on global warming as each passenger in the plane driving their own car (petrol consumption of 35 miles per gallon) the same distance. (For comparison, a full coach will approach 600 miles per gallon of fuel per passenger.) Because of the vast distances covered in a short time, at high altitude, flying has a much bigger impact on climate change than other modes.

Examples of labelled holidays

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Background

The following gives some background to the proposal:

Climate scientists think that it would be unsafe to let carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere rise beyond 450ppm from its present level of 380ppm. To achieve this maximum level of greenhouse effect, global emissions must be reduced to about 2 Tonnes (2000kg) per person per year from the present European level of around 10 Tonnes.


Questions and answers.

Q1 Why should we reduce holiday travelling now?

A Current thinking is that the overall reduction must be achieved by 2050 at the latest, with some calculations looking at 2030. This reduction takes global warming to the limit. It does not stop it happening and it will still have very serious consequences. Even if we all cut to 2 Tonnes, the world would carry on warming for some years because of CO2 already in the atmosphere. Our predecessors in the UK started the damage. We have the responsibility to act now, ahead of developing economies like China and India, so that the worldwide reduction is achieved over 20-40 years.

Tour participants may already have reduced their short journey emissions by cycling to work or to the station. They can reduce the emissions from home heating, transport of the goods they buy, and for work, but a large part of this may need major changes or expenditure that they need to plan in advance – such as moving house or changing your job – or must await changes at national level. About half of an individual’s personal emissions come from sources outside their direct control.

For most people, particularly those who have already taken first steps to reduce their carbon footprint, the largest and simplest single action they can take right now towards a sustainable lifestyle is the choice of their holiday.


Q2 Can’t flying be offset?

A No. The damage has all been done by the time the plane lands. This cannot be undone.

Carbon offsets are based on paying a small sum towards a future project like a wind turbine. If over the 20 year life of the turbine it continues to work without fail and if it is providing electricity that could not be reduced by some means and if it is displacing a carbon intensive power source which otherwise would continue to work the whole of the life of the wind turbine, then the accumulative co2 “saved” over 20 years will match the damage done by your flight. There are rather a lot of ifs in that sentence, and even then the global warming from the flight will already been happening most of the period. Carbon offsetting by purchasing trees is even less likely to be effective.
Buying carbon offsets has been compared to buying religious indulgences in the Middle Ages to secure an afterlife.


Appendix

Sources and data

sources
	kg/passengerkm
coach	0.02	Hamilton, carbon balanced.org
yorkshire bikeliner	0.035	estimate
rail tgv/eurostar/high speed (70 full%)	0.05	Hamilton, carbon balanced.org
petrol car (2 people)	0.1	Hillman, Hamilton, carbon balanced.org (.075)
air within Europe	0.32	Hamilton, Hillman (.4), carbon balanced.org
air outside Europe	0.23	Hamilton, Hillman (.3), carbon balanced.org (0.3)
ferry boat	0.367	Brand
forcing factor - air within Europe	1.9				range 2 - 4		Brand (2)
forcing factor - air outside Europe	2.0
Sources:
Hamilton (www.tgws.org), Mayer Hillman How We can save the planet,
Dr Christian Brand Oxford University Centre for the Environment

Distances

http://distancecalculator.globefeed.com/World_Distance_Calculator.asp
This gives the direct flying distance. I have added 20% to these figures for overland travel.

Carbon Dioxide emissions

UK CO2 per capita was reported by AEA at 600MT in 2006. UK population is about 60Million
This excludes international aviation and shipping.

Carbon Dioxide target

80% reduction by 2050 is a current consensus (e.g House of Commons All-Party Committee on Climate Change Bill), giving a target of 2T per capita.
Both the target and the date by which it must be achieved are subject of ongoing debate.
Work by Colin Forrest and others takes the year 2030 the target date.
Forrest’s THE_CUTTING_EDGE_CLIMATE_SCIENCE_TO_APRIL_05 concludes with a figure of 1.21T per person by 2030.




KCE Energy and Environment
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Stephen Kinsella CEng MIEE FCIBSE Chartered Engineer