Review the Guidelines for Low Carbon Travel.
Voluntary Pilot Program
Please note: this Voluntary Pilot Program for travel has closed.
The Voluntary Pilot Program ran from January 2022 to September 2023 and had 1453 travellers calculate and self-report the carbon emissions associated with their trip in their travel approval e-forms, that is, 27 per cent of all travellers.
The Below Zero team appreciates all the feedback from the ANU community on the pilot, with the main takeaway being that the calculation method proposed in the pilot should be simplified and streamlined/automated.
After consultation with staff and students from across the University, we have developed a voluntary pilot program to assist individuals in considering their greenhouse gas (GHG) footprint while making travel plans.
The approach seeks to improve our staff and students' ability to make informed decisions around their travel, including making the GHG impacts of travel transparent and facilitating low emissions approaches. It is strongly advised that staff and students consider their health and safety while making travel plans.
To participate in the pilot, we ask that you work through the following five steps:
Step 1
Step 2
Choose to travel less by reducing your need to travel for ANU-related activities. Consider if your travel is necessary.
Choose low carbon travel options by travelling without flying or flying when no alternative is available.
Choose accommodation wisely.
Support travel sustainability efforts.
Step 3
Calculate the greenhouse gases associated with your travel plans and choose the lowest emission itinerary available, with consideration of your health and safety while travelling. Remember to account for a round trip where it is appropriate. See the FAQs for more detailed information on these calculators.
- For flying, use the Flight emissions calculator. Input the airport/city for your origin, destination and any stopovers, where indicated, then click "Compute" to get the emissions in kilograms.
- There is an increased warming effect that other non-CO2 emissions, such as nitrous oxides, have when released at high altitudes. This increased effect can be fairly significant and is referred to as radiative forcing. Double the calculator's figure for flight emissions to include these additional emissions.
- For land-based travel modes use the Car emissions calculator or Bus/Rail calculator
- This calculator uses distance to calculate emissions, determine the number of kilometres for your travel. Remember to calculate the distance to your destination, any other stops (if practical) and the return to the origin city.
- Calculate distance at Google Maps, Bing Maps or any mapping platform. Ensure to calculate the kilometres for the correct mode of travel, e.g. journey via roads for cars or buses or choose rail if travelling by train.
Step 4
Report the emissions associated with your trip in the ANU Travel Approval eForm.
Calculate the emissions associated with your booked itinerary, note down the total kilograms provided by the calculators and enter it into the appropriate box when prompted in the ANU Travel Approval eForm.
Step 5
Feedback, suggestions and questions can be provided through the online form.
FAQs
What consultation has happened in developing this pilot program?
In August 2020, an online survey of the ANU community was conducted as a foundation for consultation.
In September and October 2020, University-wide consultation occurred to gather ANU Community thoughts on what we should do to reduce emissions as fast as possible. See the report from the consultation.
From February 2021, a Below Zero Travel Working Group, comprising academic and professional staff from across the University has met regularly and consulted with staff, student representatives, and groups across ANU to develop recommendations on how to effectively inform travel-related decision-making and reduce travel-related emissions.
What approach was taken when developing this pilot?
The key recommendation of the Below Zero Travel Working Group was, in order to reduce emissions, we need to create an enabling culture for informed and responsible decision-making around reducing travel. Travel will continue to be part of the University's work and as a result, the aim is to modify and reduce travel whenever possible. The working group recognised the importance of recognition of the self-managed and relative autonomous nature of academic decision-making, and the equity considerations that attach to career-enhancing travel opportunities for staff and students. Our approach has been to capitalise on intrinsic motivation from the overarching commitment to act to reduce climate change, while enabling alternatives to travel assisted by computational and technological platforms and supporting individuals and business units' ability to gauge the carbon footprint of their planned travel. There is a secondary goal of measuring and improving capacity to report travel-related emissions.
Why are we using multiple calculators?
A thorough review of publicly available greenhouse gas (GHG) calculators has revealed that there is currently no single GHG calculator that accurately reports these emissions across land and air travel to university standards. The development of GHG emission calculators is a rapidly moving field. It is anticipated the second stage of the pilot would be the development of a more integrated approach where a single GHG calculator would be integrated into the travel booking process. If you are interested in being a part of building this platform contact us.
How to best use the calculators?
It is advised these calculators are used identifying travel is necessary, to understand which methods and routes have the smaller number of emissions. For instance, you can compare the various modes of transportation (e.g. coach, train, car or flight) to get to one destination or different flight path options to your destination. In all cases, you should consider your health and safety while choosing which itinerary is best.
For land-based travel - The Carbon Footprint Calculator is hosted by Carbon Footprint, a company based out of the UK which assists businesses seeking to become carbon neutral. Their calculator has the capability to calculate emissions for multiple transport modes based on the distance travelled. The tabs at the top of the window allow users to toggle between the various types of travel modes.
First, obtain the distance being travelled (via a mapping service like Google or Bing) then enter this result into the appropriate part of the calculator. For car travel, you will be asked about the type of car you plan to use. If you are not sure of the vehicle specifics, choose the "average car" options to the best of your knowledge.
For bus or coach travel - if travelling interstate, use the coach option. For travelling around a city via public transport, use the bus option. Note the calculator for train travel is based on electric trains which operate in the UK and Europe, as well as in some areas of Asia and the Americas. Unfortunately, Australian train travel is via diesel engine locomotives, so these results do not accurately reflect train travel in Australia. There is no calculator available for diesel train travel, use the calculations for coach travel until this option is made available.
Read more about the Carbon Footprint Calculator on their website.
To use the ICAO calculator, you must know the airport names for all stops on your itinerary. You may include multiple itineraries if necessary to get a more comprehensive number of emissions for your trip. Note that this calculator pulls real-world flight path information reported by airlines. If you are not able to see your destination in the drop-down menu after entering the airport at origin, this may be because you will need to include any stopover airports for your trip.
A radiative forcing index is not included in the ICAO calculator. To account for the impact of non-CO2 GHGs while flying, multiply the result from the ICAO calculator by two. This will provide a more comprehensive estimate of GHGs associated with that trip
Read more about the ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator methodology on their website and FAQ pages.
What is radiative forcing?
There is an increased warming effect that other non-CO2 emissions, such as nitrous oxides, have when they are released at high altitudes. This increased effect can be fairly significant and is referred to as radiative forcing.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a special report in 1999, called Aviation and the Global Atmosphere stating that these emissions compound the effects of climate change by two to four times that of carbon dioxide.
The amount of radiative forcing depends on many factors, such as altitude and flight duration, so producing a singular factor by which to account for this effect is difficult. For this reason, the ICAO have chosen to not include this in their methodology. For this pilot exercise, we have chosen to balance accuracy and ease by asking you to increase the emissions from air travel by a factor of two or doubling the result from the ICAO calculator. This will more accurately reflect the impacts of the flight being examined.
Read more on the challenge of tackling aviation's non-CO2 emissions here, and how radiative forcing impacts your choices on the various modes of travel here.
Is there an easier way to compare flight emissions before booking?
We are working towards an integrated service that includes GHG considerations during the booking process. In the meantime, we offer an alternative way to understand the impacts of travel through the tools in this pilot program. We appreciate any constructive feedback on how we can improve the experience of making more sustainable decisions around travel. Provide your feedback .
Booking websites are starting to show emissions associated with the various route options. For instance, Skyscanner shows routes with fewer emissions by labelling them as the Greener Choice. Greener flights are calculated based on aircraft type, capacity and number of stops. Similarly, Google Flights displays the emissions for each flight shown in the search result as well as how those emissions compare against the typical amount for that route. Read more about how to use this feature and how they calculate emissions.
What are all the different travel mode options for my journey?
It is not always easy to determine the various ways to get from point A to B, especially when travelling to and within new destinations. Rome2rio is an online service that searches across thousands of multi-modal routes that will get you from one place to another. They do not yet provide emissions associated with each transportation mode or route. Take the results from your search on Rome2rio and input the different options into these calculators provided above to compare the emissions profile for each route.
How do I find sustainable accommodation?
There are a few well-known websites that help search for accommodation options that have adopted a badge system for promoting sustainable practices through hotels. You can read more about how these websites measure sustainability as well as how to use this feature for each site at the links below.
What are travel alternatives?
Virtual meetings
There are times when a conversation with colleagues located in other cities can be facilitated by a virtual meeting that can save everyone time and money. Setting up a meeting for multiple participants using digital conferencing tools will effectively cancel all transportation emissions that would have occurred otherwise. Alternatively, does your cohort have multiple meetings throughout the year? Make the collective decision to hold at least half of these virtually. This would reduce the emissions associated with your travel by half as well as those associated with your colleagues from other places.
Digital events
Are you organising a conference or series of seminars or meetings, which includes participants from interstate or internationally? There are options available to host this event either fully or partially online. This might not only reduce the emissions associated with the event but also increase the ability or access for potential attendees to participate via a more simplified engagement process.
Multi-nodal events
How about hosting a multi-node conference or meeting? A multi-node conference hosts in-person participants at multiple locations across the country or the globe. Individuals can travel to their closest node, joining other colleagues at the same satellite location and gaining that in-person experience without having to travel more broadly, reducing the number of emissions associated with their attendance.
Want to see more information about reducing emissions associated with hosting events at ANU? View the ANU Low carbon emissions events sub-guide.