Abstract
CO2 emissions from aviation have been predicted to increase over the coming decades. Within the academic world, flying is often perceived to be a necessary prerequisite to being a successful researcher. Many Swedish universities have ambitious climate goals, but are simultaneously among the top emitters in the public sector. Reaching stated climate goals could feasibly be met through a combination of measures, including decreased flying. One way to address the challenge is to support behavioural interventions with the help of interactive visualizations of CO2 emissions from flying. Those few examples that exist in the research literature are generally directed towards management and are less applicable to universities, given the large autonomy researchers enjoy and their discretionary control of research project funds. This paper uses a design-oriented research approach to present an analysis of the problem space at the intersection of interactive visualizations using air travel data to reduce CO2 emissions from business air travel at our own university, KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Through a number of design experiments, evaluations and investigations, we have unearthed needs, challenges and opportunities for the creation of visualization tools to support more sustainable travel practices at universities and in other knowledge-intensive organisations.
Highlights
Commercial aviation has been a large and growing source of emissions globally.The IEA estimates that in 2019, carbon dioxide emissions from aviation reached nearly 1 gigatonne, or about 2.8% of global carbon dioxide emissionsfrom fossil fuel combustion [1]
We report on work that comes out of a research project aimed at supporting CO2 emission reductions from business air travel at KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Our deliberations will show that the problem space of CO2 emission reductions from academic flying is very large and that it is possible to move between issues at a very detailed level, e.g., minute issues pertaining to data, to overarching perspectives, e.g., organisational change and the internal dynamics at a large research-intensive university
Summary
Commercial aviation has been a large and growing source of emissions globally.The IEA estimates that in 2019, carbon dioxide emissions from aviation reached nearly 1 gigatonne, or about 2.8% of global carbon dioxide emissions (hereafter “CO2 emissions”)from fossil fuel combustion [1]. Before the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, global CO2 emissions from aviation had been predicted to grow to 22% of global emissions by 2050 if efforts to fulfil climate change targets within the sector were further postponed [2]. In terms of reducing CO2 emissions from flying, the COVID-19 hiatus represents a window of opportunity to reconsider our flying patterns. There is a growing body of work around academic flying and the CO2 emissions generated by researchers’ business air travel. CO2 emissions from travelling in general and from flying in particular have increased significantly over the last decades [8] and flying has, for successful academics, become “part and parcel of professional expectations” [9] see [7,10]. The topic of academic flying is nowadays being discussed more often and a number of different studies have examined specific aspects such as the carbon footprint of an academic conference [15], the carbon footprint of shifting academic conferences to online [16,17,18], the carbon footprint of a research paper [19], the carbon footprint of a research project [20,21,22], the carbon footprint of a research lab [23,24], the carbon footprint in specific academic disciplines [25,26,27]
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