Last week I wrote about my stimulating experience of attending a conference in Orlando, Florida and presenting our recent research to the experimental mechanics community for the first time in four years.  Whilst there, I was conscious of the ecological footprint of my trip – the venue was making extensive use of single use plastics on a scale that surprised me.  However, my trans-Atlantic flight had an order of magnitude larger impact.  It is difficult to find a reliable estimate of the carbon emissions for a return flight between the UK and Florida but 1,267 kg CO2 from the Guardian newspaper website lies between a lower bound estimate of 856 kg CO2 from iata.org and and an upper bound of 2,200 kg CO2 from myclimate.org.  This is equivalent to about one-sixth of my annual domestic carbon footprint of 9,000 kg CO2 using the calculator on the World Wildlife Fund website.  The UK average footprint is 9,300 kg CO2/capita and the global average is 6,300 kg CO2/capita.  The question is whether it is justifiable to generate additional emissions to attend a research conference?  The prime motivation of the research that I presented is to support the development of aircraft which are lighter with less embedded carbon and use less energy while also having a longer useful life.  Ultimately, supporting the aviation industry to achieve its target of zero-net emissions by 2050.  The carbon emissions of the global aviation industry in 2021 were 720 Mt CO2 [see IEA report]; hence, if my research contributes towards one hundredth of a percent reduction in these emissions then this would be 72,000 kg CO2/year.  It seems reasonable to cause a tenth of this annual saving each year (7,200 kg CO2/year) for the next ten years in order to deliver the required technology, i.e., committing one year’s savings to achieve an annual saving in perpetuity.  The problem is that I do not have a reliable estimate of the carbon footprint of my research activities.  I supervised an MSc student a couple of years ago who conducted a carbon audit of the School of Engineering and estimated the carbon emissions due to research alone to be 61,531 kg CO2 excluding heating, lighting and travel.  My group might be responsible for 10% of these emissions, i.e., about 6000 kg CO2; hence, adding about 1,200 kg CO2 to interact with other researchers at a conference seems reasonable and within a budget of 7,200 kg CO2. However, it is difficult to find reliable data to use in estimating carbon emissions for these activities and so perhaps the key conclusion is that we need more and better carbon audits to allow more informed decision-making.  In the meantime, perhaps attendence at an international conference once every four years is sufficient.

Image: Tayeb Mezahdia