ITC's (e)mission

a revision

The November 2008 issue of the ITC News included an article with the title "ITC's (e)mission", which dealt with ITC's CO2 emission in 2007. In the calculations of this emission, I had to make use of a considerable number of conversion values, using literature and other sources. Unfortunately, one of the values I used proved to be wrong, with important effects on the calculated emission values. This concerned the emission due to air travel. In the original article, air travel was supposed to account for about 7 tons in 2007. I now conclude that the best value is some 1300 tons CO2. It is, however, impossible to give accurate values due to e.g., differences in airlines, variations in airplane and age, number of passengers onboard, number of en-route take-offs and landings, jet streams and others. For a Boeing 747, the range of values found varies between 10 and 20 liters of fuel per passenger and per km. Here, I use the information from British Airways, with 14.7 liter per passenger.km as best estimate. The estimate of the average CO2 emission due to fuel consumption had to be adjusted to 0.12104 kg CO2 per passenger.km for a Boeing 747. For a Boeing 737, this was adjusted to 0.09549 kg CO2 per passenger.km. The corrected values, as well as the implication for new tree planting, are given in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Matching CO2 emission with tree planting (year 2007)
(corrected values shown in bold italics)

The CO₂ emission due to the combined air travel of staff and students is the most important emission factor for ITC, accounting to 1297 tons, or nearly 58% of the total. Electricity consumption comes second with 29.5%. Staff and student travel, and electricity consumption thus account for over 82% of ITC's total CO₂ emission. Further analysis of CO₂ emission due to staff air travel, shows the following distribution across scientific departments (Fig. 1).


Figure 1. Departmental CO2 emission (scientific staff - 2007)

NRS and PGM together account for more than 50% of the total. When including GIP, these three departments are responsible for close to 70% of CO2 production due to air travel by their staff.
Consequently, the areas required for tree planting to offset the CO2 emissions also changed. If the current emission were maintained, ITC would need a permanent forest area of between 72 and 281 hectare, depending on the scenario as shown in Table 1. To visualize: this is between 3 and 11 times the area of the 'Keukenhof' (25ha)!

The big question is now what this should mean for ITC?
The best option is to reduce CO2 emission as much as possible: consider all travel not only from their financial point of view, but also with respect to their environmental impact. The alternatives are well known, but may not always be considered: video-conferencing, combination of several trips into one, number of people traveling to the same event like conferences, and so on. Frequent-flyer bonuses could also be reconsidered, as bonuses stimulate flying.

ITC is already making great steps in distance education. This will have a positive effect. On the other hand, more and more students are coming for shorter-duration courses, or for courses that involve more travel than usual (Erasmus Mundus as a case in point).
As for electricity consumption, we should continue to motivate staff and students to shut off lights and computers in their rooms and class rooms. It also looks worthwhile to investigate how much power is lost because of possibly limited wiring capacity in ITC's building. The sharp increase in power consumption by computers, beamers and the like, can hardly have been foreseen when the building was constructed in 1996/1997.

The part of CO2 emission that cannot be avoided, can best be compensated for. Additional tree planting appears a good option and options for this near Enschede could be explored. Both ITC staff and students could then be involved in an annual tree planting and maintenance day, which would maintain awareness and shared responsibility. Travel Authorization forms could also have a column where the corresponding CO2 emission data are to be indicated before submission. The trip confirmations sent by ITC's travel company BCD also include these values, but there appears to be limited attention for this. During the re-check of ITC's emission values, it was noted that BCD's travel confirmation also understated the actual emission values by 50%. BCD expressed thanks for this observation and is correcting its reporting system.
Responsibility for measures as indicated above lies with all of us. I would strongly recommend the development of a formal environmental policy at ITC at the directorate and departmental level. ITC's emissions merit to be addressed. Certainly when considering ITC's mission and its close professional link with environmental problems in the world.

9 January 2009
Alfred de Gier, with thanks to Norman Kerle and Thomas Groen

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