Carbon Footprint of Academic Air Travel: A Case Study in Switzerland
Carbon Footprint of Academic Air Travel: A Case Study in Switzerland
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DOI：
10.3390/su11010080
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发表时间：
2019-01-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.9
通讯作者：
Op't Veld, Giel
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Ciers, Joachim;Mandic, Aleksandra;Op't Veld, Giel
在瑞士和其他发达国家，相对较低的旅行成本和丰富的研究经费机会使研究人员能够进行大量的国际旅行和合作，从而导致大量的碳足迹。越来越多的人愿意解决这个问题，再加上许多学术机构希望实现碳中和，这就需要深入了解学术航空旅行。在这项研究中，洛桑联邦理工学院（EPFL）的研究人员量化并分析了2014年至2016年航空旅行的碳足迹，该碳足迹约占EPFL二氧化碳总排放量的三分之一。我们发现，航空旅行对个体研究人员的影响分布极不均匀，10%的EPFL研究人员造成了EPFL航空旅行总排放量的近60%。随着研究人员的资历增加，旅行足迹急剧增加，从博士生到教授增加了10倍。我们发现，一些简单的措施，如限制乘坐经济舱、用火车代替短途旅行和避免中途停留，已经有可能减少36%的排放。这些发现可以帮助学术机构实施旅行政策，减轻航空旅行对气候的影响。
Relatively low travel costs and abundant opportunities for research funding in Switzerland and other developed countries allow researchers large amounts of international travel and collaborations, leading to a substantial carbon footprint. Increasing willingness to tackle this issue, in combination with the desire of many academic institutions to become carbon-neutral, calls for an in-depth understanding of academic air travel. In this study, we quantified and analyzed the carbon footprint of air travel by researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) from 2014 to 2016, which is responsible for about one third of EPFL's total CO2 emissions. We find that the air travel impact of individual researchers is highly unequally distributed, with 10% of the EPFL researchers causing almost 60% of the total emissions from EPFL air travel. The travel footprint increases drastically with researcher seniority, increasing 10-fold from PhD students to professors. We found that simple measures such as restricting to economy class, replacing short trips by train and avoiding layovers already have the potential to reduce emissions by 36%. These findings can help academic institutions to implement travel policies which can mitigate the climate impact of their air travel.