Incentivising Sustainable Travel

SWITCH LANGUAGE:

How can we incentivise people to adopt ground travel in Europe?

The emissions from the travel sector, aviation especially, is growing at an alarming rate. In Europe, a great majority of flight distances could be covered by low-carbon ground transport. Incentivising travellers to avoid flying has a great potential to significantly reduce travel related emissions.

Challenge description

Air Travel is projected to double in the next 20 years. The emissions of the travel industry alone are expected to exceed the complete global CO₂ budget to limit global warming to 1.5° — around 2050, if the aviation industry continues business as usual. Aviation is exempt from many taxes, like VAT and fuel tax. In Europe alone this leads to a shortfall of €49 billion a year.

Why fly when you can go by train, boat, bus or bike? While aviation is exempted from taxation, more sustainable modes of transport do pay taxes. This creates an unfair playing field: how can sustainable alternatives ever compete with the heavily subsided flying? That is why we want to create an equal playing field and promote sustainable ways of traveling. Changing the system so that individuals will make a more sustainable choice.

While cities, regions and countries are still invested in the status quo, and even incentivising airlines and new airport / runway projects, no one stands to benefit in the long term of the expansion aviation. With the projected growth, aviation alone will eat up the entire 1.5C carbon budget by 2030. Failure to address this will bring climate change effects to every corner of the world - quickly diminishing any perceived economic returns.

There are currently no functional engineering solutions to effectively decrease the emissions of aviation. Electric planes, biofuels and efficiency increases bring marginal reductions to the gargantuan emissions at best. This is why the issue needs to be addressed from the direction of demand, behaviour and policy.

Challenge vision

How can we empower people to choose sustainable modes of transport over aviation?

Solutions should focus on ways to reach, incentivise and activate citizens on the field of sustainable travel.

The solutions may come in the form of:

products, e.g. making ground travel more productive, less time consuming or comfortable,
services, e.g. providing users with improved travel or booking experiences through UX/UI, humane design,
networks, e.g. connecting people who are likeminded or with a similar needs related to ground travel; product / service sharing platforms, information sharing sites etc.
policy change, e.g. creating advocacy campaigns to level the market in the favour of more sustianable options; making aviation more expensive, ground travel cheaper or otherwise more attractive (tax exemptions for frequent business travel etc.)

Solutions born out of the Atlantic Ocean Climathon benefit from the mass expertise onboard, and the exposure they'll get to enjoy at the COY15 and COP25, if outreach campaigns are designed effectively.

All aboard the first-ever Atlantic Ocean Climathon!

The Atlantic Ocean Climathon will occur onboard "Sail to the COP" an initiative carrying 36 climate actives over a 7-week journey from Holland to Chile, to the UN Climate Summit COP25. Aboard the ship the participants will co-create solutions to fix the unsustainable status quo of the travel sector.

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How can we incentivise people to adopt ground travel in Europe?

Atlantic Ocean