Mar 14 2009
From josh:
Any help on the details to go to the usa from europe or middle east.
And from james:
What is the carbon footprint of shipping a 40ft container by freighter compared to shipping by truck. More specifically I am looking for the impact from HK to the West Coast of Canada by ship compared to Toronto to Vancouver by truck. My simpleton gut feeling it will be the same or the container shipping will be more efficient.
Nov 04 2008
A few weeks ago I was contacted by Sophia Campbell about her flightless trip to India from the UK.
With complicated calculations, the distinction from a huge array of vehicles efficiencies in each category, and fine-tuned judgment necessary to even start to calculate accurately your carbon emissions on a complicated journey, its no wonder that you might be in need of some help. I asked a range of people to help me out on my own calculations last year, but, more often than not, the answers I received were a general figure that came nowhere near close to the actual engine model I was riding on. Well, the below calculations have been kindly researched by, again, my dad. He is an electronic engineer, with a background in physics. He often contributes to the oil drum website, and you can read more of what he’s written on other subjects here
Modern ships are a very efficient way of moving cargo. The best of the huge diesel engines they use convert over 50% of the energy in the fuel to propulsive energy fed to the propeller. The best of petrol car engines struggles get 12% to the wheels.
There has been some alarm recently about the emissions from cargo vessels. They total about twice that from aircraft but this is because they shift so much cargo. In 2007 it was something like 51 trillion tonne-kilometres by sea, about 300 times as much as by air. There are improvements that can be made to the emissions from ships but what the world needs to do most is to cut down on international transport, but what long distance cargo transport that is left is best done by sea. Continue Reading »
Nov 14 2007
Get my interactive journey maps
Big thanks to my Dad for helping me with these difficult calculations…
Today, November 14th 2007, marks the inauguration of the new British Eurostar station at Kings Cross St. Pancras, for the rail connection that links my home country with about two thirds of the rest of the world. Eurostar boasts that the actual carbon emissions of journeys taken on its trains are some 10% of the flight equivalent and with the company’s offsetting scheme, it advertises carbon free international travel.
Because, (or in spite) of my 3 week journey across a couple of continents, sans aeroplane, I have to confess: I’m a fan.
But what are the realities and practicalities of slow travel, and how does it stack up against planes?
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Clicking on this link will take you to my downloads page. Download the google earth file but be sure to check your computer hasn’t renamed it in the process! (Something it seems to do because it doesn’t understand what a .kmz file is.) Your computer will not have changed the actual file into something else, just the name to something it thinks it understands, but google earth can’t run it unless it says exactly this: bristoltotokyo.kmz
The file was made by me on a Mac, and put on my webserver – although I can’t promise you its virus free, I’m 99% sure that is the case.
OK! So open up and you can see my pink lines across the world. You can zoom in anywhere, you can even correct my map to a higher degree of accuracy and give it back to me if you so wish.
Downloading the spreadsheet you will see the breakdown of each part of the journey. Here is a graph detailing a summary of mileage versus carbon emissions from Bristol to Tokyo, (per passenger).
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Originally, I was kindly sent some figures for average carbon emissions for general classifications of transport by the Centre for Alternate Technology in Wales. However, figures for individual trains, boats, cars etc. can be very different from the average, depending on a number of factors – how full the train is (or how full it is on average per year/month etc.) determines how many people you can divide the total carbon emissions by, and this varies country to country, train line to train line. What kind of engine the car runs determines how much carbon dioxide it emits and so on and so on. We’ve made slightly more representative calculations where we could obtain better figures, but there are still many areas where accuracy could be improved.
Aside from the electric trains, we used figures for the 2 taxi rides based on a 1.5L car from the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA), Diesel trains based on information obtained from the Association of Train Operating Companies (ATOC) . Though there may be some variation in the models of diesel train, we used these figures for The Great Western line in Britain, The Germany-St. Petersburg train and the Mongolia to Beijing stretch of the Trans-siberian. Moreover, the report is dated this year, and at 74g of CO2 per passenger kilometer (p.3) it was the worst efficiency rating of the figures I looked through for diesel trains so showing a ‘worse-case’ figure. The metro in London, St. Petersburg and Tokyo was based on figures from the Campaign for Better Transport (formerly Transport 2000, -somebody please show me somewhere I can petition against the silly name change!!), printed in the Times newspaper. The figures were adjusted from their original context of the London Underground to suit the electricity mix in Russia and Japan. The boat from Shanghai proved an interesting calculation. I’m afraid I still don’t understand it but figures were obtained from the other ferry company operating that route on the basis of them having an English website. For a full understanding of this calculation, please see the spreadsheet
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I will now run through the method of collection for carbon-emission data for the electric trains I took (Eurostar, Deutschebahn, Trans-Sib as far as Naushki, Beijing to Shanghai Z class trains, Shinkansen) as they required some extra thought.
As I mentioned in a post somewhere near Germany, how much (or little) energy you expend on an electric train is determined by whether the country gets electricity from renewables, nuclear or fossil fuel.
Other methods of transport running on liquid fuels can skip this step to figure out the power needed to pull the train, multiply by time spent running and divide by average occupancy.
Eurostar actually comissioned a report, that looked in detail at the energy mix of all the countries passed through, the energy required per kilometer etc. so those figures were lifted directly.
With Deutschebahn, Trans-sib as far as the Mongolian border, and Beijing to Shanghai trains, the information was not exactly forthcoming so we used the information detailed for the British Virgin Pendolino train, assuming a similiar efficiency. We assumed a 60% occupancy, and then adjusted the CO2 based on the energy mix (as shown by the pie charts below). The Shinkansen was referenced directly from an American website, again Japan’s electricity mix was factored in.
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Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Russia, China, Japan
(In Poland, Belarus and Mongolia I only used diesel trains)
Our estimates were: Coal = 920g CO2 per kWh; Gas = 520g CO2 per kWh; Nuclear = 10g CO2 per kWh; other = ?
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In order to compare the emissions of my surface journey with an equivalent air journey, I am using data compiled by physicist Dietrich Brockhagen, Managing Director of atmosfair in Germany, from a flight simulation program of the German research association for space and air transport in an article written about a Frankfurt-Tokyo Journey. Assuming the climb out and approach, and the taxi fuel consumption are the same, I adjusted the cruise distance to a lenient ‘grand circle’ distance (the shortest and most direct distance). This results in the CO2 emissions of 1.223 tonnes per passenger journey. CO2 however, is just the start of it. As detailed on Brockhagen’s page, the emissions of Ozone from Nitrous oxides, condensation trails, water vapour and sulphate aerosols all play a part in multiplying the effect. Using his table, I am multiplying my total carbon dioxide figure from Bristol to Tokyo by 1.1, and the flight detailed here by 3 to achieve the total carbon dioxide equivalent, or the total ‘climate changing emissions’. The resulting figures are 0.6142 for surface and 3.6687 for air. Further, I am adding the Bristol to London train emissions to the air total as you’ve got to get to the airport first. The final air total is 3.6847
To add some perspective, the neat little calculator on atmosfair’s website (that came up with a very similiar reading with only minimum data input) says that my refridgerator generates 100kg / year. The average Indian citizen expends 900kg / year, and 3000kg of CO2 a year is the sustainable target (Great, I’ll be back for christmas then!!)
Every environmentally aware person I’ve met has an Eureka! moment to share about the day they suddenly felt acutely aware of our environmental vulnerability, mine was early last year – 2006, when I began having misgivings about the impacts of aviation on our planet, during the very empty schedule of my university exchange programme to Tokyo. Day to day E-newspaper surfing led me to investigate further when 2 fundamental, and alarming points kept recurring:
1. Oil is a finite resource – it will inevitably run out. Further, lots of very clever people think the half way point of discovery is going to arrive very soon.
2. The burning of fossil fuels to excess is setting in motion devastating climatic events that will affect me in my life time, and likely those of my parents’ generation, as well as millions in countries ill-equipped to deal with large scale disasters.
What was most unsettling was that politicians worldwide, old enough to have actually instigated the policies responsible for the exponential growth in fossil fuel use were unaware, or uninterested in the dual problems faced by a decline in oil discovery and production, and runaway climate change left for my generation to deal with. The haunting words of E. F. Schumacher:
‘The fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us’
Written over 30 years ago, has fallen on deaf ears.
I left Japan with a heavy heart fearing international travel presented a paradox in Western morality. Hidden by the indirectness of its consequences and masked by a façade of cheap prices and convenience, it was taking me and the rest of the world a long time to admit the damage air travel was responsible for. I ummed and ahhed over this question, joined a few advocacy groups, looked nervously at the floor when people mentioned air travel, until one day in the middle of a conversation with my family about how inconvenient climate change was being in the face of my desire to go travel my Dad interjected jokingly ‘there’s always the trans-siberian railway’
And there it was, I was sold on the idea.
After much research, I discovered practically everywhere on earth normal people would think to go with a plane, could be accessed by normal people without planes. In light of this perhaps simplistic realisation, I quit flying. My calculations show that land transport can have some future in a sustainable world, while atmosfair’s comparison of the average Indian citizen’s annual carbon emissions being almost 4 times less than a single flight from London to Tokyo, show what an out-of-kilter method of transportation air travel really is.
I’ve stopped flying because I don’t want to continue contributing so unnecessarily to what I feel is an enormous problem, but moreover I want to raise other people’s awareness that other options are available to them that don’t have to compromise their freedom. That could, in fact, increase their enjoyment of travel. Long distance travel (by which I mean intercontinental) inevitably involves a longer period of time spent travelling (though less than everyone seems to expect) but many destinations across Europe popular for tourism are reachable in less than half a day, and destinations as far away as Morocco and Russia can be reached within less than 48 hours actual travelling time. We can not (continue to) deny that making responsible choices about how we treat our planet in the interests of long-term sustainability will require a change in our behaviour but we can take enormous comfort in the realisation that ‘slow travel’ does not mean ‘no travel’, it means more thoughtful travel. Only when we stop taking our great luxury of travel for granted will we start to appreciate why we desire to do it in the first place.
Oct 15 2007
I’m itching to complete my post about the first leg of my journey as far as Berlin, and I’m close to finishing the calculations (with lots of help) but its really difficult to get an accurate idea because there is lots of conflicting information that is hard to discern between. The Centre for Alternate Technology in Wales have given me the figures from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and from a study by Godfrey Boyle – an OU professor and researcher in this area. Continue Reading »
Sep 18 2007
more photos…
UB guesthouse half emptied at 7am this morning. With fast international trains running only 2 or 3 times a week, the days it did run saw tourists bundle out of Ulan Bataar in herds.
Sara and Daniel, the Swedish couple who’d been mirroring my journey since Moscow, were in my ‘vagon’, as were the couple from England I’d met at the border town of Naushki between Russia and Mongolia.
Leaving Mongolia through the Gobi, I was coming to understand just how far I’d come from London. Gers and camels dotted a sparse, lifeless-looking plain that stretched infinitely in every direction. The flat yellow brown steppe with a patchy, poor covering of dusty green coloured plants was a landscape entirely foreign to me.
These felt dwellings and cattle herdsmen were the last outposts of Mongolia and around 8.30pm we reached the frontier.
Formalities ate up a couple of hours before we drew into the border town of Erlian, where an enormous neon sign announced: Erlian CHINA.
Before anyone could get off, the train pulled into the bogey changing shed where carriages full of passengers were hoisted 10 foot in the air while Russian/Mongolian wheels were removed and new Chinese gauges slotted in. Sometime after 1am we finally left the border into the penultimate country on my journey.
Sep 11 2007
more photos
Knocking at our compartment door when unanswered for several minutes until Alio and I simultaneously sat up and attended to another of many interruptions since we’d gone to sleep. It was Gorchia from a couple of doors down, excitedly pulling us to the windows where Earth’s largest fresh-water lake was metres away from the window. We spent most of the morning staring at it & taking pictures. The lake stretched for miles of track with scores of passengers pressed up against the windows looking for the perfect shot and the SLR crowd, represented mostly by the northern Europeans on our carriage, muscling in on the open windows so as not to have to shoot through a muddy window.
The lake was a perfect deep blue set against the paler clear sky. When the train got close enough to the shore you could see the bottom of the lake-bed through the clear waters. Later we past the Kamar daban mountains. Sitting together in these last few hours observing the intensely beautiful scenery fall behind us and knowing that the next stop would be whre we’d say goodbye.
Gala, Alio and I were silent and reflective between Gorchia’s frequent calls for Alio to join him for a cigarette. Gala told me her “holiday very good!” I asked what she would do at Baikal – miming swimming, fishing etc. No, she said, they’d take a tour bus, and I was reminded of how much the trains are a part of ordinary Russians’ lives. Here was couple who’d taken at least 5 days from their home in Bryansk, west of Moscow to go on holiday via train, and would need a further 5 to get back. Whether or not the lack of cheap air travel within Russia plays a big part of that, the culture of slow travel seems ingrained in the Russian psyche. I don’t know what Gala and Alio thought of my solo travels, or indeed of the influx of young westerners filling their trains for elaborate and costly adventures, but their friendliness and hospitality will be what I remember most about the train, aside from Alio’s moustache. Gala asked me if life in England was difficult, but I could nod in amiable agreement. Life in England is not difficult. In England, thankfully, the few not the many struggle. As could be attested by the 20 or so westerners, myself included, playing explorer on her train. When I returned the question, she said yes and looked out the window. I looked with her and replied, but beautiful? Yes she said, it was beautiful.
I stepped onto the platform and photos were taken by each of us, I hugged Gala tightly goodbye and she said “luuise: good travels, and, good education” something she’d been practising all morning. I said yes but had no Russian to explain and as I got back on the train I was filled with sadness leaving more people behind. I rested through the afternoon until Naushki, the border town between Russia and Mognolia. The train stopped for hours and the long drawn out goodbye to Russia pushed from late afternoon into darkfall.
Sep 11 2007
more photos
I woke up on and off throughout the morning in the girls room having spent the night there not wanting to wake Alio and Gala since all the Westerners had been up late chatting. They’d warned me they slept late but by 11am, at the stop where Polina was getting off, I decided to leave while they slept on. I was too late to catch Polina, and stopped in their newly anglified cabin, occupied now, only by Richard and Ed.
Gala was surprised to see me there, having ‘not come home’ the night before.
As she patted my head, she seemed to say ‘I was worried’ but it was in Russian.
Later we picked up ingredients for a lunch time feast at a passing station. The best selection by far, we chose from chicken, cooked potatoes, salad vegetables, stuffed pancakes, beef paddies and more. Rendezvousing back in my compartment, we attempted to force Gala and Alio to join our feast so that we could return their hospitality. They partially accepted our food and we ate enough to last us most of the rest of the day. I saved the giant fish head and some strips of the meat for Kaori, the Japanese girl on her honeymoon with her English husband bound for Japan, slowly.
We dispanded for naps and reading, only to reconvene at our last station stop before nightfall. We were all too groggy or hungover for more beer and instead took to biscuits, green tea and 3 rounds of old maid. Time moved on and soon it was 11 and I said goodbyes to all the English speakers, all of whom were getting off at Irkutsk at 5 in the morning. Hopefully I would see Richard and Ed again Mongolia in 2 days time, and Kaori and Edgar in Japan. All the exciting adventures that were laid out before us returned to me again and again that night and I couldn’t sleep for a long time. I’d barely drifted off when Provodnitsa came into my room and plonked my flask on the table which I’d left next door after old maid. This was soon followed by the new passengers boarding, loudly. English, Mongolian & Japanese floated around from all directions and it was some time before I was asleep again.
Sep 11 2007
The train journey, reflecting now, near its end as I write my diary entries for each day late (I’m actually retelling Friday from the vantage of Monday) was hardly defined by days in its strange time-zone hopping. It wasn’t the disorientation or nausea associated with jet-lag, it was just that the same sort of thing happened each day but without any daily order leading to a continuous napping-reading-writing-sleeping-talking-eating affair. Days merged and mealtimes, bedtimes and appropriate alcohol consumption times fluctuated at our whim. With that in mind here are a few of the events that happened during the journey.
I made friends with the couple in my carriage, even though the husband rolled his eyes when I said “Hello… I’m English” as my introduction to pre-empt being spoken to in Russian. I brought out my phrasebook and ‘point-it’ book full of useful pictures to point at when travelling. I tried very hard to be extra friendly and after a couple of hours it seemed to have worked. They offered me some peanuts from an enormous bag. I politely accepted a few, to which they practically poured a mound of peanuts into my hand. I said thank you. Their names were Alio and Gala, and the peanuts were just the beginning of snacks, full on meals with tuition on dried-fish dissection, and countless other offers of beer, tea, biscuits and so on. Soon after we made our beds and slumbered until morning.
A particularly memorable event that happened at a completely unmemorable station was the disembarkation of all the English speakers numbering about 6, myself included, at this early stage in the journey. We asked the restaurant staff how long we would be stopped at the station in question, and the particularly rude and unpleasant head of the restaurant car told us 20 minutes. We all hopped off, over the tracks to the station to buy food. By the time I’d got mine, it was just me and Amanda left, the others having returned. Amanda and I headed out, our train only a couple of tracks away. We walked towards it and as we did so it started to move. And then it moved faster. In a split second I was coming to terms with my laptop, stored in the compartment beneath my bed going to Ulan Bataar without me. We caught the eye of one of the carriage attendants and started yelling for their attention. They threw down the steps, expecting me to jump on while holding 3 bags containing boiled eggs, juice, a chicken and rice meal, a beer as well as my handbag and camera pack. I hoped along sideways like a crab, increasingly distressed, but there was no chance with the train going faster and faster. When Amanda’s friends Liz and Jane found us at the wrong end of the train, we didn’t know whether it was our’s or their screaming that had led to the train coming to an abrupt holt, bringing with it immense relief for all of us. I didn’t dare go further than the platform immediately outside the train from then on… and all the westerners boycotted the restaurant car for the remainder of the journey.
After a good 4 hours recovering and picnicking in the girl’s compartment, I returned to my carriage where Alio and Gala let me know that another Russian man had moved in to the bunk above me. He came in a few minutes later and did an uncanny Alio impression when told I didn’t speak Russian. He rolled his eyes and took a good 20 minutes of convincing, before he started wanting to know where I’d come from and what I was doing. Soon he was marching his 13 year old daughter in who had presumably had basic English lessons at school. She hid behind her parents and giggled whenever they said go ahead talk to her! I just smiled and waited. Eventually she said what is your name and I answered. She told me her name was Polina. After a while she got more confident and was running through dictionaries and phrasebooks trying to ask me questions. I was a bit stuck on telling her American music I liked that she would know, but she told me she liked Beyonce and 50 Cent. As the afternoon wore on, the carriage became the centre of entertainment as we tried to bypass the language barrier by playing cards with 2 other families from the carriage. One guy, Gorcha, came in and did a few magic tricks for us, and I tried to get a handle on a complicated Russian card game that seemed to have rules made up as it went along.
Sep 11 2007
I decided to acclimatise myself to Moscow overland, walking a mile to the centre on a beautifully clear and warm morning. I stopped to buy a map then located a coffee shop to organise my day.
Moscow’s wide fast roads were dusty, as were the buildings that although showed evidence of grandiose Soviet ugliness, had a surprising abundance of more European style architecture.
The subways under major roads were filled with enclosed market stalls. Built into the structure, they were little glass bricks with a hatch and the stall keepers were stuck inside and the shop’s wares were plastered around the brick for punters to view. These little pods weren’t just for magazines, tobacco and refreshments, but clothes, underwear, CDs and more. All of which were ordered from the cashier, and sold through the hatch. Continue Reading »
Sep 05 2007
And I did so almost in style, as I got up from the platform where I’d been wi-fiing my blog and pictures and emails, straight into my own couchette supplied with towels, copious bedding, basin that doubled as a table, bathroom cupboard and mirror above basin. Not to mention the mini wardrobe and other cupboard with lots of shelves inside it.
Famiiles of up to 3 people were sharing a similar sized space between themselves but no-one seemed to be sharing with strangers, in this class anyway ( – 2nd I think). In fact, the only thing Soviet about the train was the toilet paper. I was delighted on the train for 3-4 hours until about dinner time.
I picked my way through the carriages, the ends of which had (mostly women) passengers smoking and staring out the door-window. Through what I assume was hard-class, I walked further until I opened a door that released the smell of curried rice in my direction. Before I’d got more than 3 steps into the carriage, a portly man looking very unfriendly put his arm across my path, saying nothing.
“Hi” I said. “Hi” he said. “Is this the restaurant,” I asked. “Niet bus-nyues classs” he shook his head. “Then where is the….” “Niet Niet” he said marching forwards forcing me out of the carriage. Sorry I mimed as he closed the door.
Mild panic took hold of me in this moment for I was due to be on the train for 33 hours and I only had a bag each of dried pears, dried mango, and dried peaches [thanks Josh 
] 1 and a half small chocolate bars and some coffee. What kind of transportation goes for 2 days without any facilities for purchasing food?!
Since we’d made a very odd diversion through Frankfurt, we would not pass Warsaw until gone midnight. I wasn’t sure what the currency of Belarus was, and I certainly didn’t have it, so there was every chance that no food would be available to me until Russia. I passed at least one bleak hour thinking about my arrival in St. Petersburg in the darkness of pre-dawn having not eaten for nearly 2 days.
After 2 discussions with the Providnik (carriage attendant) I sort of ascertained there would be time to get food in Orscha, Belarus at 13:30, day 3, where the train decouples to split off – half to St. Petersburg, half to Moscow. This is all well and good if they will accept Rubles or Euros or Dollars but I have little else to bargain with except my ipod… which I’m not so keen on giving up for a bag of crisps
I settled back into watching the greenery of Poland go by and with the help of my water bottle discovered that I can wash my hair in under 2.5 litres of water, in my basin in my private train room. A further 0.5 litres to wash.
