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The Integrated Travel Emissions Profiles project has investigated greenhouse gas emissions and related climate change impacts from transport at the personal, household and local levels. It provides an improved understanding of the extent to which individual and household travel activity patterns, choice of transport mode, geographical location and socio-economic factors impact on climate change related transport emissions. As the UK is facing tough choices on how to respond to climate change, it is crucial to know who is contributing to the problem and the extent to which different groups of the population will be affected by policy choices.

The objectives of the research were:

• To extend previous work on Travel Emissions Profiles to include all passenger transport modes.
• To collect detailed disaggregate data as a basis for future travel and energy auditing at the household and individual levels via conventional paper-and-pen and web-based surveys.
• To implement this methodology in a detailed emissions model and to apply the model using the data collected from targeted households.
• To highlight policy implications for local and national governments.

The two travel surveys undertaken in Oxfordshire provided a total sample size of 456 individuals living at 278 addresses. The sample was re-weighted to ensure that it reflected the demographic and car ownership characteristics of the population.

The significant academic achievements are the successful development, extension and testing of a comprehensive travel emissions profiling methodology, producing a rich dataset, in particular for car and air travel. Four alternative methods for calculating emissions from car and motorcycle travel and three methods for air travel were tested. Results were validated against existing national data. The results feed into the ongoing debate about appropriate carbon measurement tools at the household level, the potential effects climate change policies might have on the various sections of the population, and how the techniques developed here could be integrated into wider carbon auditing.

The main policy implications are:

• Climate change mitigation policy should focus primarily on car and air travel.
• For each mode of travel, it is a minority of users, travelling comparatively long distances, who account for the differences between high and low quintiles. To reduce impacts it is therefore vital to address long-distance travel by car and air.
• Particular attention should be paid to air which it is estimated can account for 70% of passenger transport climate change impacts at the individual level, although there are important methodological issues relating to the treatment of international travel, return trips and radiative forcing.
• For respondents in the highest impact decile, the climate change burden from flying alone was 19.2 tCO2tot per year. This has implications for any future carbon allowance scheme, where allowances will be reduced year on year to a “safe” level in terms of climate change that could be as low as 2 tCO2tot per person per year.
• In contrast, respondents in the lowest impact decile were primarily children at school age and retired residents older than 75 years, on low income (<£10k) and with lower than average access to a car.
• The results further suggest that enforcing motorway speeds to the already existing legal limit could save up to 4% of CO2 from all car travel, well in line with figures estimated in other work.

Award/Grant Outputs and Documents
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