Transportation and its Carbon Footprint

In Summary: Everything up to 400km is probably better travelled on the surface as much as possible excluding CO2 consuming motorised transport. Everything above 400km travelled by air travel. Air-travel has had a ‘bad-rap’ but this has forced it to clean up and become more efficient. Budget airlines are often more efficient as they ‘pack’ more people on board and often have newer or upgraded aircraft

From my previous post you’ll notice that I only touched on transport. This is because it is such a contentious topic that I felt it needed a small article all to itself. As with everything the message here is nuanced because the calculations are not primarily based on CO2 alone but also on travel time, distance, time available, location of destination, number of people traveling and whether the form of travel accommodates the multiple travelers, and if there are dependants etc.

LIST 1: So for the average person I’d say:

It’s safe to say that air travel has had a CO2 bashing over the last few years and this has had some positive effects in terms of efficiencies in the industry. Indeed, most of the online tools seem to be using out of date metrics for calculating flight costs — and this is compounded when costs can vary significantly even down to the carrier. I’m finding it better to look at industry standards and work on an airline by airline basis.

Secondly, the carrier is significant. Counter to my initial beliefs the budget airlines come out better. This is because they ‘pack’ more people in the planes. We can calculate the efficiency in terms of CO2 per passenger per mile/kilometre. So this means the more people on a flight the more efficient the flight. In Europe this has had the effect of making Ryanair the most efficient carrier, with premium carriers such as British Airways being very much less efficient due to first class, business, and premium economy where the passenger density is much less.

So what does all this mean for me (and maybe you)?

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