At the start of 2010, I decided I was going to try not to fly this year, for the whole year. Now six months in, I’ve finally got round to blogging about it to explain why.

(I actually published this post briefly about a month ago but I realised I’d miscalculated the figures in the second part of this post. Apologies to people who read the first version as the figures and graphs have now been fixed, and I’ve re-written most of the article based on more up-to-date information.)

The main reason I’m trying to avoid flying as much as possible is because of the disproportionate impact that flying has on climate change compared with other forms of transport like trains or cars. Planes, like cars and most UK trains, emit carbon dioxide (CO2) which can be measured in metric tonnes. The combustion of aeroplane fuel, however, emits other gases too: nitrogen oxides and water vapour. At high altitudes (which is where most aeroplane emissions are made), these gases have an increased impact on the climate compared with at ground level¹.

Travelling by plane can produce the same emissions per person as travelling the same distance by car but you typically travel further in an aeroplane than you would by car or train so the amount of carbon dioxide emitted is greater before you even start to include the effect of the other emissions at altitude.

How flying compares with other activities

Currently, each person in the UK, on average, is responsible for about 9 tonnes of carbon dioxide (and the CO2 equivalent in other greenhouse gases) per year². For the sake of comparison with other countries, the USA emits about 19 tonnes, France emits about 6 tonnes, China about 4.5 tonnes, and India about 1 tonne per person³.

Although the UK looks quite virtuous in comparison with the USA (see the graph in ³), now compare the UK with China and India. And remember that the 9 tonnes doesn’t include all the stuff we import to the UK that is manufactured in other countries, such as China and, therefore, is included in China’s accounts.

When you include the things we import, plus flying (currently not included in national environmental accounts), the UK’s average person emits nearly 14 tonnes of CO2 and equivalent greenhouse gases (collectively known as CO2e)⁴. However,  this being an average means, of course, that some people emit more than that and some people less than that. Typically, the more money we have, the more greenhouse gases we cause to be emitted.

Aeroplane emissions account for about 1.2 tonnes of CO2e per person⁴ but are rapidly increasing¹. For the sake of comparison, home heating and car travel each account for about 1.2 tonnes of CO2e per person per year. Also, only about half the population of the UK takes 1 or more return flights every year.

Although some effects of human-induced climate change are too late to reverse (and we’ll have to adapt to those changes), we can avoid more significant increases in global temperature (2-4 degrees Celsius) if we significantly reduce our CO2e emissions. In the UK, this means reducing our emissions by about 75-80%^4,5. This sounds a lot but it’s possible if we reduce to almost zero our use of fossil fuels, such as by reducing the amount of energy we use to heat our homes, changing to using electric instead of petrol/diesel cars, and changing our electricity sources from coal and gas to mostly renewable energy sources (potentially including nuclear energy)⁸.

Which brings us back to aeroplanes, which run on kerosene, which is a fossil fuel. Although there is research into alternative fuels for flight, there’s no alternative at the moment. And even if there were already, planes have long lifespans and so would be unlikely to be replaced with newer more efficient versions very quickly.

So, aeroplanes are running on fossil fuels for the foreseeable future, aeroplane journeys tend to be over longer distances than typical car journeys (one return flight from London to New York is nearly 7000 miles⁶, compared with the UK average of 9,000 miles that a car would travel in a whole year), aeroplane emissions have a greater impact because they are at high altitude (one return flight from London to New York emits about 1.5 tonnes CO2e per person⁶ over 7000 miles, compared with 1.2 tonnes CO2e for 9000 miles of car travel per year), and even the emissions from short-haul flights cause about twice as much impact on the climate as the same emissions would on the ground.

So, the single most significant thing an individual can do to reduce their impact on climate change is to stop flying.

All my flights in my life…ever

When I started learning about the human impact on climate change in terms of numbers, I wondered about the impact of flights I’ve made. Last year, although I didn’t really think about it in any detail, I was vaguely aware that I’d taken quite a few short-haul flights throughout the year. And I knew that the previous year, I’d flown to the U.S. for a conference as well as some flights within Europe. Through a combination of saved emails (flight booking confirmations) and memory, I constructed a list of all the flights I’ve ever made since my first in 1999.

The following graph shows the 37 flights I’ve taken, by year, since 1999 (click the image to see a larger version):

And the next graph shows my carbon dioxide (including equivalent greenhouse gas) emissions for those flights:

The four years with large spikes were the years I took return long-haul flights to the USA (twice for work, once for a wedding, and once for a non-work conference). Other than that, the flights have all been within Europe, including six within the UK (between Southampton and Scotland).

So why has the number of flights I’ve taken increased so much in the past few years (specifically, since 2003)? Mainly, it’s a result of getting a job (I was a student until 2001) so I could now afford to fly. Also, post-university, friends started getting married and inviting us to weddings. Two of the long-haul flights, and four of the six internal UK flights, are wedding-related. There was also the christening of my godson which I’m counting as a wedding-type of event here and involved a return-flight to Europe.

Here’s a breakdown of the CO2 emissions by the primary reasons for taking the flights (the number in parentheses in the legend shows the number of actual flights per reason):

The greatest proportion of emissions was due to flights for work, that’s not too surprising as I work for an US company but only four of the eight flights making up that large segment were actually long-haul. Two were short-hauls within the US, and two were short-hauls to Europe, which just goes to show how big an impact transatlantic flights alone have on greenhouse gas emissions. The two next largest categories of CO2 emissions are Conferences (non-work-related) and Weddings, both of which include one return flight to the US. In contrast, although the greatest number of flights is down to holidays, they’ve all been in Europe so the CO2 emissions per flight, and overall, are lower.

Bearing that in mind, my 2005 and 2008 flights produced nearly 2.5-3.0 tonnes of CO2e per year, which is twice as much as the average UK person. And that’s before I even start counting home energy usage, car travel, and so on.

In conclusion…

The lesson at the crudest (and probably most obvious) level, is to avoid going to destinations that require long-haul flights. That would imply that short-haul flights are mostly okay then? Well, not really. The key thing with short-haul flights is that there are almost always alternative ways to travel that same distance that have a much smaller impact on climate change, making it often unnecessary to fly. Even when the amount of CO2 per person works out the same by car as for flying (you can fit more people in a plane than in a car, for instance), the effect of that CO2 and other emissions at high altitude is worse than at ground level. It’s possible, for example, to get from the UK to the South of France by train – which is especially good for the CO2e accounts when you consider that France’s high-speed train (TGV) is almost carbon neutral as it runs on electricity mostly from nuclear sources (not fossil fuels like UK electricity)⁵, and the Eurostar is carbon neutral through an active project to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as much as possible and to offset the rest⁷.

I can’t swear I’ll never go to the US (or other long-haul destinations) again, and there’s not really an alternative way to get there other than flying. I wouldn’t take that decision lightly though. For this year though, during which I’m not flying at all, that means the US and other destinations for which there is no alternative are out, and I can only go to places to which I can find an alternative mode of transport.

References

¹ Calculating the Environmental Impact of Aviation Emissions 2nd Edition, Dr Christian N. Jardine. Published by Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford, for Climate Care, 2008.

² CO2 Emissions Per Captia, UK. Google Public Data. Source of data: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2007. Accessed on 4th July 2010.

³ CO2 Emissions Per Capita, US, UK, France, China, India. Google Public Data. Source of data: World Bank, World Development Indicators, 2007. Accessed on 4th July 2010.

⁴ How To Live A Low-carbon Life, 2nd Edition. Chris Goodall. Published by Earthscan Publications Ltd, 2010.

⁵ The Hot Topic. Gabrielle Walker and Sir David King. Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, London, UK, 2007.

⁶ Mileage for a return journey between London Heathrow and New York’s JFK airports calculated using Climate Care’s online calculator at http://www.jpmorganclimatecare.com/ on 4th July 2010.

⁷Eurostar’s Tread Lightly project: http://www.eurostar.com/UK/uk/leisure/about_eurostar/environment/tread_lightly.jsp. Accessed on 4th July 2010.

⁸ Sustainable Energy: Without the Hot Air, David MacKay. Published by UIT Cambridge, 2008.

So after completing a smaller practice project last Spring, I decided to tackle something I’d actually wear. And as it was July, I figured it would be timely to make a jumper for the Winter (or even the Autumn, in my more optimistic moments). So I chose the Unseamly Sweater from a book I have called Stitch ‘n’ Bitch: The Happy Hooker. This weekend (8 months later, and on the verge of Spring),  I finished it.

Here’s a photo of me modelling it, catalogue-style (photo courtesy of Tony Whitmore):

I’m really pleased with how it came out. There was a moment last weekend when it seemed I wouldn’t be able to complete the second sleeve because I’d run out of yarn, and my original supplier was permanently out of stock. The combined wonders of Google and Ebay saved the day.

So, being a good little IBMer, I now turn to Lessons Learned:

• Hold the crochet hook; don’t grip it. I struggled for the first two-thirds of the body (crocheted as a tube – front and back at the same time) to get my ‘guage’ right. Guage is the number of stitches to the inch, and is determined by a combination of weight of yarn, size of hook, and how tightly you hold the hook and yarn.
• Use the right size of hook. Related to the point above, I started the jumper about 5 times before it was neither fit for a child nor fit for two of me at once. I actually used the right-sized hook for the arms (a size bigger than the pattern suggests) but, for the body, I used a size smaller and I ended up having to increase the wrong number of stitches to make it the right size of jumper. This also meant that I ended up buying more yarn than I should’ve needed.
• Buy enough yarn first time. Every book tells you that this is the only way to ensure a consistent shade throughout – something only guaranteed by all the balls of yarn being dyed in the same batch. Because of the previous two points, I ran out of yarn not once but twice. Consequently, the body and the first quarter of one of the arms is a teeny bit darker shade than the rest of the arms.
• I enjoy the decorative bit more than the…um…mundane bit. This is the same as for the sunflower pots I made two years ago. Being crochet, it was actually quite quick to get through the mundane bits and I enjoyed it more than I expected. I do, however, much prefer making the fun frilly bits and changing stitches. So while I really like the finished effect of this particular pattern, it did get rather repetitive along the way.

Incidentally, the yarn I used (for both this jumper and my previous project) is Anchor Bamboolo, which is actually made from bamboo mixed with some cotton making a lovely soft, light, shiny yarn – similar I think to mercerized cotton, which is what I’d looked for originally. Bamboo is probably better for the environment than cotton, which is usually really bad for the environment because of the phenomenal amounts of pesticides that have to be used to grow it (though this article and its comments ponder the pros and cons of bamboo as a material from a furniture design perspective).

So, bearing those lessons in mind, I’m now keen to find my next crochet project. I seem to have acquired a few patterns already and they might make more sense now that I’ve done a relatively easy one!

Typing that hurts slightly because I used to be so smug that we were a one-car household.

We (Tony and I) live in a village, and I work in another village. Public transport from villages in Hampshire to the cities isn’t that great; public transport between villages is worse. For a while, one of us would take the other to work but after trying both permutations of that arrangement, the fact that the two workplaces were pretty much opposite directions made the effort fairly pointless (in some ways was probably even a bit less green than if we’d each driven in separate cars because whoever was driving would end up in the morning rushhour traffic after dropping the other at work). For a while it worked with Tony catching the bus and me driving the car to my work – though this probably wasn’t ideal in terms of greenness because I was the only one in the car.

So, next, I was fortunate in that a couple of friends (who are also colleagues) car-shared their way past the end of my road every day and offered to include me in the arrangement too. That worked for a few months until a house-move by the driver meant that he would now be driving in the opposite direction from work to pick me up. So I finally tried the bus that ran through our village.

That was January 2007. Nearly two um three years later, I’ve finally given in and got a car. I did mandate to myself that it had to be rated at at least 60 miles to the gallon, and be as close to 100g/km carbon emissions as possible. Aside from a momentary wavering when I met Martin’s rather lovely Lotus Elise, I am proud to say that I stuck to that requirement (partly by telling everyone I knew so that I couldn’t slide out of it!) with my new 3.5yr-old C1 (60miles to the gallon; 109g/km). And it’s great – despite being a 1.0 engine, it’s only teeny so it’s very nippy.

So why did I give up the smugness of ‘being green’? Mostly (without boring you with joys of working across timezones) because I just couldn’t attend cross-timezone meetings and still get home by bus some days any more.

So how green am I now? Well, I really don’t know. I suspect that, in hindsight, the most ‘green’ arrangement I’ve tried was when I car-shared. When I was catching the bus, I wasn’t actually catching it every day because I did also get ad hoc lifts from friends too but bus was definitely my default transport for those two years. I’m actually not convinced that I was especially green for about 50% of the buses I caught – in terms of numbers of people on the bus, as the Ethical Man suggests. I have no evidence for this but I think the lift-sharing was probably greener.

So, I should/will probably start giving lifts to people who live on the way to work as long as my travelling times fit with theirs. Maybe I could/should continue getting lifts some days (and leave my own car at home) as I did before. I’ll have to see how it goes…

On a final, positive note, travelling with other people (whether by car or bus) is actually quite good fun and useful. On the bus, there’s a small community of regulars who usually say hello and notice when you’ve not been there for a while. Which is really nice, and I’ll miss that. Sharing lifts (or catching the bus with someone from work) is also really good because it gives me chance to catch up with the other person and find out what’s going on on their projects. It’s also been really valuable for doing reading or thinking. And it makes you get up on time and leave work on time.

Greenpeace have updated their rankings…and Nintendo still holds bottom place. Pleased to see that Samsung and Nokia are still doing well (I have a Nokia phone and Samsung laptop and TV – part of my reason for going with Samsung was their green and ethical reputation).

A while ago, I wrote a blog post (Carbon off-setting) in which I described my current view (or near lack of) of carbon off-setting schemes. When I booked the Virgin flights, I didn’t immediately go for the carbon off-setting option because it pointed to a company I’d not heard of and, in a world of dodgy carbon off-setting schemes, how do I know they’re any different?

So I did a bit of research. I remember last year the UK Government (specifically Defra) identified four carbon off-setting companies that were kind of recommended but kind of not. Which is a reflection of the state of confusion customers are in. While I used Climate Care last year because that’s what The Co-op uses (and, apparently, The Guardian too), Climate Care isn’t one of the companies on Defra’s list, which means that it doesn’t meet Defra’s guidelines. But are Defra’s guidelines really that good?

I came across an interesting article in The Guardian from last summer. At the end of the article, it mentions a not-for-profit Gold Standard method which accredits carbon off-setting projects (renewable energy and energy efficiency projects with sustainable development benefits). This rang a bell with what I’d seen on the Virgin website.

Virgin Atlantic have set up a scheme with myclimate, a Swiss not-for-profit foundation, that customers can use to offset their flights. myclimate have several projects, including some that have already achieved accreditation by the Gold Standard, which is supported by several groups, including Greenpeace.

You can be cynical about an air travel company providing this kind of service – obviously it’s great for their image – but it does look as if Virgin have spent a fair amount of effort on it. They even provide a page explaining how Virgin calculates the carbon emissions of their customers (we’re travelling Economy – hence my titular smugness).

So, having read around a bit about the Gold Standard method of assessing projects’ effectiveness, I decided to go with Virgin and myclimate’s service. And I’ll probably use myclimate in future too (although there are other companies and not-for-profits that have Gold Standard-accredited projects as well).

While doing some filing just now, I found the latest issue of The Co-operative Membership magazine, which has an article about The Co-operative Bank and its ethical policy. The Co-operative Bank apparently uses the Climate Care scheme to off-set its carbon footprint of things like business flights. I figure that The Co-operative Bank is probably a reasonably reliable role-model in such things so I decided to just get on with it and calculate how much carbon I contributed to the world by flying this year.

I’m sticking to personal flights here and not counting my return flights to the US at Easter for business. I need to look into what IBM’s eco policy is for such things.

So, sticking to personal flights, I think I’ve done pretty badly this year in terms of the number of flights I’ve made. Tony and I went on holiday to Paxos, a Greek island, in May, which involved return flights to Corfu. Also, I flew from Southampton to Glasgow for a wedding in June, although I virtuously caught the train back (I couldn’t take the day off work to get the train both ways). And Tony and I have another three flights between us between Southampton and Edinburgh for another wedding. On the plus side, we went to Brussels for a weekend in February using the Eurostar both ways – which was not only greener but actually quicker and more pleasant in my opinion.

According to the Climate Care calculator, all that comes to the grand total of £8.96. Which doesn’t seem very much but I guess that’s because they’re all fairly short-haul flights. I can’t remember how much CO2 that was but I’ll get my PDF certificate within 5 days to remind me.

So do I feel less guilty about my flights? I’m not sure. I don’t think so. I still feel it was an excessive number of flights to take – especially when it is actually possible to catch trains to Scotland (although the 7.5+ hours it takes each way from Southampton does cause problems if you’re going just for the weekend). I try to imagine what I’d have done if low-cost internal flights weren’t available. I guess I’d have either taken more holiday from work or just not gone to the weddings. I don’t think the availability of carbon off-setting would have featured very heavily in my decision. My reason for catching the train home when I went to the wedding in Glasgow was that I wanted to try to be at least a bit greener. I’m quite happy to sit on a train for an afternoon with a book, and it was actually cheaper to catch the train than to fly. I actually wouldn’t mind paying a little more to catch the train than fly so I felt a bit smug that I’d proved wrong all the people who claim that flying is cheaper than other forms of transport to travel long-distance in the UK. I’ve recently discovered, in travelling more frequently between Southampton and Lancashire, that you can actually get pretty good train deals if you book far enough in advance.

So, my position on carbon off-setting isn’t cut and dried. I think I see carbon off-setting as the last resort, after trying to find greener methods of travelling. I like to think that I’m making a bit of an effort in that (catching the train and Eurostar when it’s possible) but I know it’s not really as big an effort as it could be yet.

When we first looked into it last year, we thought it would have to be mounted on an external wall. As we live in a narrow mid-terrace cottage, we don’t have a huge expanse of convenient external wall on which to unobstrusively mount a boiler. At best, we’d figured it would have to go in the computer cupboard (aka the server rack), which wasn’t really that ideal.

I guess it depends on the make/model of boiler but this is the make that Sean has used before because it’s easy to maintain and get parts, I think, and, for us, being able to vent it through the roof is definitely the best option. And being able to control the heating using a wireless thermostat/control means that we don’t have to make the trip upstairs just to override the timer settings.

So I worked at home for three days while it was all being installed. On the first day I had no heating or water (hot or cold) but a neighbour kindly lent me a key to use her facilities; after that, we had cold mains water but no heating or hot water. It was bliss on Friday evening being able to run the hot tap, and on Saturday morning have a hot shower.

The upshot is that we no longer have a hot water tank (and hence no airing cupboard), we have no cold water tank or header tank in the storeroom, and we have no ugly 1970s outset gas fire stuck to the chimneybreast. We have yet to decide what to put in the hole that the fire and boiler left behind but in the meantime, we can admire the pretty 1970s lime-green wallpaper that we discovered behind some formerly boxed-in pipes in the living-room:

I’m now the butt of Tony’s jokes: “hello, do you like Laura’s butt?” hahaha “Oh Laura, what a big butt you have!” hehehe “Come and see Laura’s big green butt…”
*sigh*