At our second meeting we decided to re-open the question of public transport emissions. I am starting this thread to encourage people to contribute their views, read others and perhaps develop our ideas before the third meeting at which I propose a final decision be taken for our first carbon year (1st April 2008 – 31st March 2009).
At the first meeting we decided re Surface public transport to:
Include:
Journeys more than 50 miles from home
Include regular travel within the 50 miles of home e.g. commuting. This is because CO2 emissions can be significant from commuting and other frequent local travel.
Exclude:
Travel on behalf of your employer or business is excluded. (Commuting to/from your normal place of work is not considered as travel on behalf of your employer or business).
At our second meeting I incorrectly said that the authors of the system upon which CRAGs are based, proposed to exclude surface public transport. I have now checked How We Can Save the Planet ( Mayer Hillman & Tina Fawcett, Penguin, 2004 ) and I think I should clarify this. They include “personal transport” (p.126 – bullet point list of main features) and exclude “business transport” (p.127 – personal transport and household energy use). However, in the last sentence of their “Administration” section they say that to ensure that the introduction of the system would not be too complex, they suggest that initially it should exclude journeys by public transport as these account for only a small part of road transport emissions (p.129). In other words its an issue of pragmatism rather than principle for them.
Wychwood CRAG member and Carbon Account developer Jamie Andrews has quoted the attached work by Catherine Bottrill of the UK Energy Research Centre in support of the case for NOT counting public transport *.
I summarise the points relevant to this thread as follows :
1. Except for London, only a small percentage of individuals CO2 emissions are from surface public transport (4% nationally).
2. It is difficult to calculate individuals emissions because of lack of accurate data on emissions factors, occupancy levels & distance travelled.
3.Not counting public transport would motivate individuals to switch away from using private vehicles.
4. CO2 from public transport would be included in a non-personal carbon trading scheme giving public transport operators the incentive to act. [ Infact, I am fairly sure they are now included in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.]
5. Not counting public tranpsort would reduce the hassle factor for individuals making it easier to understand the scheme and manage their carbon budget.
( * If you have trouble opening the pdf file on-line, you might wish to try saving to disc then opening it from there.)
Comments and Proposal from Ian Hylands
Rick M
Ian sent me his thoughts shortly after the April 3rd meeting.
“Hi Rick, I was thinking more about public transport. I think that there is a strong arguement against counting it based on the fact that public transport use should be encouraged so that demand can increase and services improve. The surprisingly high emmision factor for local busses of 86.3g/pkm is in part due to the low occupancy, and would be much lower if everyone started using them.
Public transport is part of the solution.
However, I still don’t think that public transport should be ignored. Travelling by public transport is still a choice that we make which results in the emmision of greenhouse gasses. Somebody who chooses to galivant all over the country on a regular basis by public transport may be having a much greater impact on the climate than somebody who travels little, but uses the car only occaisionally for shorter journeys.
Public transport is also part of the problem.
Perhaps I’ll feel differently after reading Heat, but I also disagree with (many) CRAGs on the indirect emmisions point (ie. treating public transport emmisions as the responsibility of the transport company). There are many ways we can reduce our indirect emmisions, and as far as I can tell the main reason for not counting them is that it is difficult to do – either for practical reasons or because the science has not yet given us reliable figures to count with. This does not apply to public transport, which is relatively easy to count.
Another possible compromise would be to count public transport in the way suggested at the previous meeting, but to assume higher occupancy, as will occur in the future. This way PT users will not be stung for the reluctance of everybody else to use it. Drivers will have more incentive to switch to PT, and PT users will have some incentive to travel less. This way would seem to tick all the boxes, as long as the occupancy is set at the right level. I was going to suggest the average level for London, as it is higher than the national average, but I notice that it is only 13.5 compared to 10.6 so there isn’t much difference. Perhaps if we took the optimistic view that at some point by 2030, PT use has increased to the point where the average bus occupancy had risen to 20 or 25? The emissions for an urban bus would then be 37 to 45 g/pkm. Similar assumptions could be made about trains.
What do you think? It is fairly simple once you have agreed on a best-case future average occupancy, but I can see that figure being difficult to agree!
Hope the rest of the meeting went well. See you soon,Ian “