Contrary to most sectors, to date the tourism and aviation industries have not managed to level off greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, effective mitigation through technological innovation or structural and behavioural change cannot be expected shortly. Airlines and tourism companies appear to use carbon offsetting as a last resort. However, offsetting is generally acknowledged as a second-best solution for mitigating emissions, after reducing energy use. This paper seeks to determine the mitigation potential of voluntary carbon offsetting by comparing public and industry awareness of climate change and aviation emissions, and attitudes to various mitigation measures with relevant online communication by 64 offset providers. Methods were a literature review and online content analyses. Overall, the gaps that were identified between awareness, attitude and actual behaviour are not bridged by provider communication. From this perspective, the mitigation potential of voluntary carbon offsetting for achieving reductions of tourism transport emissions is estimated as low. The same conclusion is reached by comparing carbon dioxide volumes of flight offsets with actual air travel emissions. Current sales of flight offsets compensate less than 1% of all aviation emissions.
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Technological development from horse-drawn carriages to the new Airbus A380 has led to a remarkable increase in both the capacity and speed of tourist travel. This development has an endogenous systemic cause and will continue to increase carbon dioxide emissions/energy consumption if left unchecked. Another stream of technological research and development aims at reducing pollution and will reduce emissions per passenger-kilometer, but suffers from several rebound effects. The final impact on energy consumption depends on the strength of the positive and negative feedback in the technology system of tourism transport. However, as the core tourism industry including tour operators, travel agencies, and, accommodation has a strong link with air transport, it is unlikely that technological development without strong social and political control will result in delivering the emission reductions required for avoiding dangerous climate change.
Buildings are responsible for approximately 40% of energy consumption and 36% of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the EU, and the largest energy consumer in Europe (https://ec.europa.eu/energy). Recent research shows that more than 2/3 of all CO2 is emitted during the building process whereas less than 1/3 is emitted during use. Cement is the source of about 8% of the world's CO2 emissions and innovation to create a distributive change in building practices is urgently needed, according to Chatham House report (Lehne et al 2018). Therefore new sustainable materials must be developed to replace concrete and fossil based building materials. Lightweight biobased biocomposites are good candidates for claddings and many other non-bearing building structures. Biocarbon, also commonly known as Biochar, is a high-carbon, fine-grained solid that is produced through pyrolysis processes and currently mainly used for energy. Recently biocarbon has also gained attention for its potential value with in industrial applications such as composites (Giorcellia et al, 2018; Piri et.al, 2018). Addition of biocarbon in the biocomposites is likely to increase the UV-resistance and fire resistance of the materials and decrease hydrophilic nature of composites. Using biocarbon in polymer composites is also interesting because of its relatively low specific weight that will result to lighter composite materials. In this Building Light project the SMEs Torrgas and NPSP will collaborate with and Avans/CoE BBE in a feasibility study on the use of biocarbon in a NPSP biocomposite. The physicochemical properties and moisture absorption of the composites with biocarbon filler will be compared to the biocomposite obtained with the currently used calcium carbonate filler. These novel biocarbon-biocomposites are anticipated to have higher stability and lighter weight, hence resulting to a new, exciting building materials that will create new business opportunities for both of the SME partners.
The carbon dioxide emissions of aviation play an important role in many studies and databases. But unfortunately, a detailed and reliable overview of emission factors, and algorithms to calculate these based on factors like seating class, airline type, and aircraft type, did not exist for the Dutch aviation sector. This study calculated such emissions for a sample of over 5000 international flights in 2019 from the 5 Dutch main airports. The data about the flights were gathered from FlightRadar and enriched with seating capacities specific to the airline performing ten flights. in this way, emissions could be assigned to each of the four seating classes (economy, economy-plus, business and first). By aggregating the data to airline types and distance of the flight, algorithms were developed that help researchers and policy-makers to calculate the emissions. Societal IssueThe carbon footprint of Dutch aviation is about 10% of the total footprint. To prevent the world to exceed 1.5 degrees C and enter 'dangerous climate change', emissions need to decline to zero before 2050. This study helps assess and understand current aviation emissions from Dutch airports.Benefit to societyThe results were an update of emissions factors as used by the funding organisation, MilieuCentraal, and the official emission factors list (https://www.co2emissiefactoren.nl/lijst-emissiefactoren/).
Client: European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) The European Institute of Innovation & Technology, a body of the European Union founded to increase European sustainable growth and competitiveness, has set up a number of Knowledge and Innovation Communities (KIC). One of these Communities is on climate change (Climate-KIC). In 2013, Climate-KIC in the Netherlands approved funding for the IMPACT project (IMPlementation & Adoption of Carbon footprint in Tourism travel packages). This ‘pathfinder’ project aimed to assess the viability of and market for a comprehensive carbon calculator. Such a calculator would enable enterprises in the wider travel industry to determine the carbon dioxide emissions, the main cause for climate change, of tourism products and include ‘carbon management’ in their overall policy and strategy. It is generally expected the cost for fuel and carbon will significantly rise in the near en medium future. The calculator will not only cover flights, but also other transport modes, local tourism activities and accommodations. When this pathfinder project finds interest for carbon management within the sector, we aim to start a much larger follow-up project that will deliver the calculator and tools. The IMPACT project was coordinated by the research institute Alterra Wagenigen UR, the Netherlands. Partners were: - Schiphol Airport Group, Amsterdam, The Netherlands- Technical University Berlin, Germany- TEC Conseil, Marseille, France- TUI Netherlands, Rijswijk, The Netherlands- NHTV Breda University for Applied Sciences, The NetherlandsThe project ran from September 2013 to February 2014.
