– The carbon footprint of air travel – 

I could do a whole calculation about how many tonnes of carbon dioxide you bring into the air by flying but that number would probably not speak to mind. On average if you take two intercontinental roundtrips each year for an extended holiday to say Thailand, you double your total carbon footprint for that year.

Compared to traveling by car, flying is about twice as polluting but this is calculating with only 1 person driving the car. If you go on holiday with your partner that means a flight is four times as polluting as driving the same distance. If you venture out with four people, flying is eight times as polluting. And now we’re just talking about the carbon emissions. Flying releases its gasses at higher altitudes which means it traps heath higher in the atmosphere which is worse for the environment.

Better yet than driving is taking the train! Especially considering lots of trains in Europe actually run on electricity these days. This means that if the respective railway companies use electricity produced by solar or wind your trip is virtually exhaust free. Not taking into account operational emissions that is. 

So now we heard the depressing part, lets stop moaning about it and get to solutions. How to fix it without changing our awesome plans of backpacking Argentina, Vietnam and South Africa in one trip? By offsetting the carbon emissions of those flights. 

– Carbon offset of flights options –

Even though there are more ways to go at it, generally there are 3 main options. 

1.) using a compensation scheme of the airway your flying with;

2.) partaking in a carbon emissions offset programme; and

3.) buying carbon emission rights. But you should not do this. I’ll explain why not later in this read.

Airways’ own  carbon offset schemes

The easiest option to offset the carbon emissions of your flight is using Airway’s own carbon offset schemes. This is only available when flying with certain specific airways.

Some airways have their own offset schemes. When booking your flight you tick the box that you want your flight to be carbon neutral, pay the added fees and you’re done. This will increase your ticket price with roughly 10%, depending on the airways company and as easy as that you compensated for the carbon emissions of your flight. Sure it is more expensive, but is a 10% add-on really such a burden?

KLM is one of the airways offering this service. Not only do they make compensating incredibly easy, they are also ranked as the nr. 1 airways company on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the last 12 consecutive years! Whenever I am flying a route on which KLM has a direct service and their fares are roughly the same as the alternatives I pick KLM. 

Carbon emissions offset programmes 

These days the whole world is a whole lot more environmentally conscious as a decade ago. Therefore there is a plethora of programmes to choose from. It works reasonably simple.

First you pick a carbon emissions offset programme. All three I mention below are great, but there are more options to pick from. You calculate the exhaust of your flight with an online carbon emission calculator integrated on their websites. You select a project that reduces carbon emissions elsewhere, for example by providing cooking stoves or planting trees, and transfer the required funds to the programme. The programme will take car of the rest.

The added flexibility of choosing from a huge portfolio of projects for your carbon compensation, means you will always find the cheapest current programme to partake in. In general this adds 5-10% to your ticket price. Some projects are way more expensive so if you are feeling hedonistic, feel free to pick a more expansive one. 

https://co2.myclimate.org

This is a Swiss programme and that is exactly the reason why I like it. They are trustworthy and are very transparent and verbal about the successes of the specific projects. The programme has a built-in calculator in which you can simply type in the airports your flying back and forth from and you’re all set. Payment options are Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. 

www.climatecare.org

Climatecare is great because they have a very intuitive and complete calculator and they are very cheap. Your options to select projects however is limited so you have less say on how you are actually compensating. If you want to do good as cheaply as possible, this is probably your best bet. Payment options are also Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. 

www.carbonfootprint.com

Carbon Footprint is great because it has the biggest versatility in payment options. Credit cards, PayPal, Maestro or wired transfer, it is all possible. Carbon Footprint is also cheap! The two downsides are that you need to register an account in order to compensate and that their calculator is not integrated into their compensation form. They do have a calculator on their website and registering is easy and free but still the programme is less intuitive than the two mentioned above. 

If you are planning on compensating often however this one is a good option. Also if you don’t own a credit card, go for Carbon Footprint.

Why buying carbon emission rights is a bad idea

A few years ago I was a big fan of buying EU carbon emissions rights. The idea is simple. The European Unions has issued a limited amount of carbon emissions rights which are linked to a certain amount of tonnes you can emit. If you want to emit more you have to buy more emissions rights, for example from a company that emits less than it has a right to do. Because the amount of rights is finite, the prices of Co2 are linked to offer and demand. If you buy these rights you essentially take them out of the system, creating a smaller pool of rights and hence leading to less emissions and higher emission prices.

Perfect plan right? Sadly no. The problem is two-fold. While the amount of emission rights is finite the amount of rights in circulation at the moment outweighs the amount actually being used with a factor of 2. Buying rights at the moment means buying rights that aren’t even used so you are not saving anything. Secondly if this technique proves to be extremely effective and the amount of emission rights is drastically reduced, so much reduced in fact that companies are unable to operate because of it, there is a high chance that the EU will issue additional rights to ‘fix the problem’.  Simply put, buying carbon emissions rights, sometimes referred to as carbon certificates, is a waste of money. 

– the offset of carbon emissions step-by-step –

To make it even easier for you to offset carbon emissions of your flight I’ll guide you through the process step by step. These details are from my trip to Albania and Montenegro which  I fly out to in a couple of days. I picked ClimateCare to compensate for these flights.

STEP 1: Calculate your emissions

Enter your flight details and click ‘Add to basket’. This flight is not a roundtrip as I am flying back from another port, I can simply add both flights to the basket and then press Checkout.

STEP 2: Check whether you selected the right flights

Check whether you entered everything correctly and then click ‘Proceed’. The price for compensating for 2 persons flying a 3000 KM roundtrip on economy class is less than EUR 10/ $10!

STEP 3: select your payment option

Select either Visa, MasterCard or PayPal. I usually use PayPal, the payment will take place in a popup. Make sure you disabled your add blocker beforehand. 

STEP 4: Complete payment in the popup

After payment you will get this screen, which means payment has been successful. Hooray! You’re done, it was that easy. 

STEP 5: boast with your certificate

After compensating they send you an email with a ‘certificate’ attesting to your carbon offset. Now you can use this certificate to boast to your friends on how incredibly green you are. Doesn’t everybody love people who do that? Or those guys that put it on their blog and write a whole article about it. Love those guys.;)