My personal experience to mitigate my family's carbon footprint, generated by transportation during our vacation.

The purpose of this post is to show my journey, in order to minimize the environmental impact caused by family vacations, during the 2019/2020 period. I hope that reading this post can inspire you to start your journey and develop your own "path to sustainability", with actions similar to this one - Laerte de Araujo Lima

PS: If you liked this article, please share it (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp), to inspire and motivate more people!

Let's start with the WHY:

We, as a family, are fully committed to protecting the environment and reducing our environmental footprint. The path is not always easy, but major improvements have been implemented since we decided to move forward with this purpose, and one of the most important was the change of #mindset.

We are a family of 4 (in fact 5 including Pipoca our pet :), living in France. I am Brazilian (with all my family living in Brazil), Carmen, my wife, is Spanish (with her family living in Spain, Germany and France).

As you can imagine, trips, whether by car, plane, or train, are very common , mainly for tourism and family reconciliation purposes.

In 2019/2020 we (as a family) decided to start mitigating our carbon footprint, created during our vacation, related to transportation (plane, car, train, etc.), using the 4-step process below:

How?

Step#1 - Identify my family CO2 footprint

In Step#1, I had to compile the entire carbon footprint related to transportation, generated during our tourism trips. To make this, I made some assumptions.

• All trips done by cars, ferries, airplane, trains and taxis are taken into account;
• The kilometers are calculated from door to door (round trip)

For our 2019/2020 vacation, I compiled the following amount: 64,706 km traveled.

Step#2 - Calculate my carbon footprint

Once the trips have been identified and categorized, the second step is to transform the kilometres travelled, in kg CO2 equivalent, for each type of transport.

A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by an individual, event, organization, service, or product, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalent [Source : Wikipedia]

AIRCRAFT: 

Some airlines usually show the CO2 values per passenger when booking, but in this case the airlines I used did not provide these values (and I am not sure to remember during the check-in process in their APP).

I could find several tools, to calculate the CO2 emission of our flights such as :

• www.atmosfair.de 
• www.co2.myclimate.org/ 
• www.calculator.carbonfootprint.com/ 
• https://www.icao.int/environmental-protection/Carbonoffset/Pages/default.aspx

I did the simulations on all the tools listed previously, and the values are quite different, se below the result for one case:

The main facts of these different ones are the premises used. Some tools only calculate flight emissions (related only to the kilometers traveled by the aircraft from point A to point B), on the other hand, some tools calculate, besides the flight emission, other collateral emissions (pre-production of fuel, infrastructure of the flight, ozone formation, etc.

Another source of difference is the fact that some of the tools work with "generic" consumption data for the aircraft, instead of specific data (manufacturer, type of turbine, model, etc.), which can also influence the final numbers:

Finally, due to the big differences, we take the most significant number that, in our analysis, and the most real and pragmatic, so we make sure it is on the “safety side”, so we use the data provided by www.atmosfair.de :) 

==> If you want to know more about the assumptions and considerations calculation tool, you can check the documentation available here:

CAR:

To calculate the CO2 footprint of the km driven by car, I used the tool www.carbonfootprint.com, which makes the calculation much easier, mainly because it is possible to find an excellent vehicle database (per year / model and brand); in addition, the calculation is done automatically.

FERRY:

Regarding Ferry, I was unable to find a database that does the calculation automatically, however, I use the following hypothesis 1km = 267g / CO2, found here https://www.tourdumondiste.com/limiter-son-empreinte-ecologique-en-voyage

TOTAL FOOT PRINT:

After approximately 30 minutes, i could calculate my family's carbon footprint, generated by means of transport during our holidays in 2019/2020.

13273 kg CO2 or 13,273 ton of CO2

Step#3 - Compensate your CO2 footprint - Offset strategy

There are many different strategies, to offset your CO2 footprint, like : Renewable energy, Methane collection & combustion, Energy efficiency,Elimination of industrial pollutants,Land use, land-use change and forestry, etc.

A carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for emissions made elsewhere.One tonne of carbon offset represents the reduction of one tonne of carbon dioxide or its equivalent in other greenhouse gases. [source]

By doing a simple Google search, you can find many websites that can help you find your best compensation strategy. These sites allow you to choose a compensation project, within a wide portfolio of projects with different strategies, with an associated cost for each ton of CO2, such as:

• https://www.goldstandard.org/take-action/offset-your-emissions
• https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/
• https://www.carbonfootprint.com/carbonoffset.html

In our case, we selected the United Nations project compensation portfolio (https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/ ).

The main reason is that all projects are certified in Clean Development Mechanism (CDM).

The CDM process involves variety of stakeholders such as the project participants who own the projects, host-country national authorities who oversee national implementation, independent auditors know as the Designated Operational Entities, the UNFCCC CDM Executive Board and its secretariat. At a higher level, all CDM work is coordinated and directed by the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP), the ultimate body responsible for the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol where all member states take collective decisions.

UN-certified offsets, also known as certified emission reductions (CERs) or carbon credits, are generated from CDM projects that reduce Greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions via a variety of methods. These projects can, amongst other approaches:

• REPLACE the use of dirty fossil fuels with clean renewable energy (wind, hydro, solar, biomass);
• REDUCE energy consumption and the use of fossil fuels through energy efficiency measures (clean cooking stoves, energy efficient light bulbs);
• CAPTURE already released carbon in trees and other plants (reforestation and forest regeneration projects), amongst other approaches.

Finally, the project selected was a hydro project in Brazil.

https://offset.climateneutralnow.org/shps-tamba-das-pedras-and-rio-do-sapo-cdm-project-jun1132-brazil-9925-?searchResultsLink=%2FAllProjects%3FCoBenefitsId%3D436, 

The project's main purpose is to provide renewable electricity power to the National Interconnected System avoiding thermoelectric plants operations that use fossil fuels as energy sources. The project consists of three Small Hydro Power Plants (SHPs) installed in Brazil.

In absence of the project activity, fossil fuels would be burned in thermoelectric plants connected to the grid to supply the country’s electrical demand. Emission reductions are around 22,000 Ton CO2/year.

The project will also generate Sustainable Development Co-Benefits, such as Environmental, Social and Economic for the local community

In addition, a certificate is provided to you, with the amount of Certified Emission Reductions (CER’s) obtained on your compensation.

Here below :)

Last by not the least, the offset payment can be easily managed by Credit Cart (almost all are accepted, PayPal or bank transfer). For some cases, a minimum amount is required.

Step#4 - Lesson Learned & Improvements

I have been working for 20 years in various industrial sectors (automotive, energy and aviation), in areas of project management, quality and procurement.

During these years, I could see how sustainability has taken a more important place in the strategy of companies, being fundamental in modern business policy.

The Internet offers all the tools and solutions needed to help you calculate and offset the CO2 footprint generated during your vacation. The most difficult thing is to compile all the data (km traveled by each type of transport) during the holidays.

The figures, obtained from various CO2 calculation tools, are based on assumptions. Of course, you can fine-tune it to improve this measurement, but the most important point in this process is the actions you take to mitigate/compensate your CO2 footprintint.

PS: If you liked this article, please share it (LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp), to inspire and motivate more people!

Links of interest:

• https://www.earth-changers.com/blog/2018/5/15/10-tips-on-how-to-reduce-your-carbon-footprint-in-travel-and-should-you-carbon-offset
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/gdpr-consent/?next_url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.washingtonpost.com%2ftravel%2ftips%2fquestions-about-carbon-offsets-flights-answered%2f
• https://www.thecommonwanderer.com/blog/how-to-carbon-offset-flights
• https://www.indietraveller.co/carbon-offsetting-flights/
• https://greentravelerguides.com/tips/carbon-offsets/
• https://www.fodors.com/news/travel-tips/everything-you-need-to-know-about-purchasing-carbon-offsets-for-travel
• https://www.airbus.com/company/sustainability/environment/decarbonisation.html