Carbon footprinting in Europe
We’ve been doing some work for Current TV on the future of urban mobility. Obviously questions of sustainability quickly arise, how can we improve urban transport networks throughout the world while removing greenhouse gas and particulate emissions from the equation? A tough question but it was cool to see how different approaches are being used to try and answer it.
We were lucky enough to have a look at the cycling culture of Copenhagen, which is leagues ahead of anything we are doing in the UK. The main difference between Denmark and the UK in this regard seems to be cultural acceptance of cycling.
In Copenhagen cycling is a default transport option for everyone whereas in the UK cycling in the city is predominantly the enthusiast wrapped in tight lycra or the occasional London cool cat with his/her single speed. London has recently introduced its own version of the cycle superhighways taking flavours of what you might see in both Paris and Copenhagen. Haven’t had a go on one of the bikes yet but hope to soon. It’s great to see London beginning to think about these ideas but again there needs to be a cultural shift to embrace cycling and a more developed infrastructure to support cyclist in the city.
Not long after Copenhagen we went over to Oslo to check out how to turn your poo into a transport fuel. The video will be online in early September so we’ll be sure to let you know. In the meantime here a small video from the trip, decadent travel of the first degree…!
The ironic thing about filming these sustainable transport initiatives is that we had to get there using some sort of carbon based method of travel. We thought it might be fun to try a couple of different ways and see what kind footprint we came back with.
There are a ton of different guides on the internet explaining which mode of transport is better and which is worse in terms of CO2. Flying gets in the press for being noticeably bad but we all still do it because it’s often the only practical way of travelling over a long distance in budget and to a deadline. I personally quite enjoy soaring above the Earth at 30,000ft and have always been quite excited about the prospect of flying yet feel a slight pang of guilt when a long flight can essentially cancel out any low carbon lifestyle choices I might be trying to adopt.
For our trip to Copenhagen we decided to ditch the plane and try the car. We looked at trains but in the time and budget we had it simply wasn’t an option. So we packed our kit in a 2.0TDI and set off from London to Copenhagen via Dover (Obviously Ferry) – Calais and then onward though France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Quite a drive, 1,419km actually, and then back totalling 2,838km. Now to fly is obviously more direct (~1770km return) but also more carbon intensive per km.
Plugging those numbers into a couple of online calculators (myclimate, CO2balance) it’s very close. For Trunk to get to Copenhagen we used 790kg of CO2 to fly and 780kg to drive, 10kg less in total to drive straight in each direction for ~18 hours. 10kg is the equivalent of ~3.7l of diesel, which is somewhere in the order of 40km travel in a 2.0TDI family sized car! One can see the attraction of a 2 hour (tops) flight.
I must also add that this is very much a back of the hand calculation and has not taken into account the fact that we took a ferry from Dover to Calais and that we drove most of the way through heavy rain and snow which will have contributed to a larger carbon footprint than that shown. Now this is completely conjecture but could the driving footprint with these factors considered be larger than the carbon footprint of flying? I would hedge my bets and say quite possibly yes. I must also clarify that these figures are for the combined emissions of two people flying and the total for a car. And I haven’t even mentioned NOx or particulates.
And what about Oslo? If we had driven the route would have been 3700km return compared to flying with a total of 2410km. Again emissions workout surprisingly close, CO2balance showed that a return flight from heathrow would be 1000kg CO2 and that driving would be 950kg CO2. Myclimate on the hand showed that the same flight would be 1058kg and that drive would come in at 1085kg CO2.
We used the Eurostar for some trips Paris earlier in the year and Interestingly and not entirely unexpectedly CO2 emissions form long distance rail travel is significantly less carbon intensive. We’re talking by factor of 10 or more, of a CO2 saving compared to both flying and driving a car. Maybe next time we’ll go for the train if we’re in filming in Europe.
willus.
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