Carbon footprint

A snowHead

Flying or driving to the Alps. Which is kinder to the environment?

A snowHead

HORSE

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Is this going to turn into a whacky races thread? OK, I'll take your horse, and raise you a unicycle.

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Depends, what car/how many in it, what airline modern/old planes full/half empty. Rail is possibly greenest (although some would argue about electricity production).

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Colin B, for the purposes of the discussion, let's asume 4 in a car and a nearly full plane, about 120 people? I strongly suspect flying is the more green option. Train option is interesting.

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Dr John, a couple of related websites.

Responsible Skiing

- "the fact remains that the emissions per person from flying are huge. Choosing not to fly is the single decision that will have the biggest effect on the overall impact of a ski holiday."

- "Therefore, even if a small car was ‘fully loaded’ with two people and luggage or a large car ‘fully loaded’ with 4 people – the emissions are still more than double that of a coach or a train."

- "taking a coach is the better option environmentally (and much better than flying)"

apparently. Based on that it would seem to rank the green options in the following order, train, coach, car and finally plane (although, walking, horse or unicycle would presumably all be in with a shout too).

SnowCarbon (although this one seems to be promoting train travel so you might need to aim off).

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nozawaonsen, interesting, although I'm a little suspicious of the extravagant claims about coach being a better way to travel than flying. It's 100% subjective, but they're presenting it as objective research. Also they're not giving like for like averages of car/plane option, which is odd.

After all it is free

Angels on pinheads. If you worry about CO₂ emissions, you shouldn't go on skiing holidays at all. But if everyone stopped skiing, I imagine the impact on the world's mean temperature would be the square root of bügger all.

laundryman, well quite. Not worried, just curious.

I'm miles in credit on emissions anyway, living and working in London I haven't needed to own a car for 15 years. EAT THAT PRIUS DRIVERS.

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Dr John,

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

I live in a supposedly 'carbon neutral' house, whatever that means. But the green brigade would probably hate me. I live alone. I drive a petrol car and ride a petrol motorbike with combined mileage of about 20k per year and I probably take over a dozen flights per year.

I suppose I care, but the need to earn a living and get some form of satisfaction from life comes first.

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It's also not just about what's emitted, but the fact with aviation it's being emitted at 35,000ft. But a plane emits a lot less when it's up there than either getting up there or coming back down again - the longer the flight, the more efficient the plane will be on that flight in effect.

I've wondered for a while whether with modern technology the time of the airship will come around again for short to medium haul flights. New 'almost lighter than air' airships with wing shaped bodies are able to take off and land on their own without the aid of the ground crews required in days gone by and could actually be more flexible in terms of where they depart / arrive from.

Also apparently lower altitude flying turbo prop planes are supposedly not just more efficient, but have less adverse effect due the lower altitude then fly at. Rail certainly has the potential to render much short to medium haul aviation redundant and it does seem likely that one way or the other aviation will become over time more focused on long haul / trans oceanic routes for which we don't really have a viable alternative at the moment - though rail could get there on trans continental routes, though you prob don't want to be on the train that hits a Buffalo at 500mph!

You know it makes sense.

So if it's using less fuel, why is rail so expensive? I'd have thought a plane costs more than a train too. Does upkeep of the tracks add up to that much?

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Winterhighland, I'd rather be a passenger than the buffalo!

A snowHead

clarky999, depends which country you are in, UK has I believe the most expensive railways in the world to travel on (or at least that was the case a few years ago and prices have only gone up), planes cost a lot more than trains, rail maintenance is cheaper than aircraft maintenance (assuming both are done when they are supposed to be done) but new rail lines cost a lot with land required whilst planes only need air

A snowHead

Dr John, That's an incredibly complicated question that has no definite answer despite the naive simplifications made by many greens.

Most statistics compare average CO2 emissions per passenger kilometer travelled, but that varies enormously according to load factors, the vehicle model, the type of fuel it uses, how well it's been maintained, and how direct a route it follows. Taking trains as an example, a Eurostar from London to Paris emits 11g/km/passenger, but a London to Glasgow sleeper train emits a massive twenty time mores at 200g/km/passenger. The difference is largely down to load factor (there aren't many passenger cabins on a sleeper) and the French reliance on nuclear power for electricity generation.

Short haul flights emit around 150g/km/passenger, and a typical fully loaded passenger car emits 45g/km/passenger - better than an average UK train (60g/km/passenger) and much better than an average bus with a typical 9 passengers on board. For a journey from London to Glasgow, in rising order of greenness, we therefore have car, conventional train, bus, plane and worst of all, sleeper train. The irony, of course, is that in our topsy-turvy world of environmental fundamentalism, the bus and train are heavily subsidised but the car is heavily taxed.

But, as any accountant will tell you, marginal costs are the things that matter when you're making a decision. The plane is already flying, so you jumping on board will create almost no additional CO2 emissions. As an individual, the greenest answer is always to use a form of transport that's already travelling.

This all-pervasive green intellectual laziness drives me crazy. A few years back an environmentalist campaigner made an example of my then 9-year-old son who'd just returned from a skiing trip to the States, and told his school class that it was irresponsible for his parents to have taken their child on an unnecessary long haul flight. But the plane was flying anyway; and, as the flight was fully booked, my son presumably took the place of some lardy-bottomed doughnut-guzzling behemoth and measurably reduced the plane's take-off weight and fuel consumption. Madness!

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Colin B, The electricity is produced anyway. It's not rail specific electricity.

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ricfrench, specific power distribution is required. It is expensive, and I wonder how the initial carbon footprint cost for that (and indeed for wetting up the railway as a whole) is quantified and amortized. The power supply systems for TGVs (and indeed any high speed train) has to be able to cope with what is, in effect, a travelling demand for electric power. The 25KV AC system involved is not cheap.

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Jonny Jones, good post. The enviromental hypocrisy surrounding various forms of transport seems typical of the modern, short sighted, way of looking at things.

Winterhighland, turboprop engines are some of the most parsimonious (efficient) users of fuel of all internal combustion engines, and though popular in, say, Russia, are considered too coarse for the majority of civilised westerners. With fuel costs rapidly rising this may change, but with the latest miserly turbofans not that far behind in efficiency, it remains to be seen.

Of course neither can compete with the non-polluting electric train.................... wink

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achilles, What ever, we don't use tgv's, or the specific tgv electric system.
We do use a 25kv system taken directly off the national grid system.
Now find that off t'internet, in English.

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achilles,

Just remembered what the OP was on about, then figured out that most of the milage to the alps is actually in France on a TGV. Sorry.

After all it is free

ricfrench, Even in England, the principle will be the same for (for instance) the East Coast main line. The problem of the high-speed travelling demand for power (as the power car moves) was one that had to be addressed during the electrification.

Jonny Jones, but the Sleeper trains travel overnight when the rail network is lightly used - they transport passengers without putting additional strain on the infrastructure loading - and the energy used in building and expanding infrastructure can't be ignored if you want a full picture. Also most of the distance is under the wires, traveling overnight when there is usually a surplus of electricity from base load. It gets very complicated!

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Carbon footprint

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