Driving Down Transportation Emissions
Transportation is a huge piece of running wilderness courses. At NOLS, travel is responsible for 40% of our carbon emissions, and that’s before you count instructor and student travel to NOLS locations! Students and instructors must often travel to far-flung locations just to begin their adventures. A lot of that travel is air travel, which is responsible for particularly potent carbon emissions. So how does NOLS go about reducing something that is so integral to its operations?
The transportation that is currently included in NOLS’ carbon footprint is staff travel and student travel once they arrive at a NOLS branch. Several branches have already taken steps to mitigate the carbon emissions from this transportation. Some have purchased larger buses so they can transport more than one course per trip to the mountains. Others have examined their course schedules to combine one course’s drop-off with another course’s pick up. Still others have purchased hybrid vehicles for running course errands in-town. All of these big changes are taking us in the right direction-but will they be enough to meet our reduction goal of 30% below 2006 carbon levels by 2020? We’re not sure. We’ll continue to measure and mitigate, and look for new technologies and fuels that will allow us to run courses with less impact.
And what about all those students traveling to get to NOLS branches in the first place? Bicycling from New York to Patagonia isn’t going to work! While NOLS, in keeping with international standards, does not include this travel in its carbon footprint we do feel a keen sense of responsibility in being the impetus behind it and continue to encourage our students to travel as efficiently as possible. We also encourage students to purchase carbon offsets to help mitigate the environmental impact of their travel.
Efficiency is the watchword for our current transportation carbon management plan, but it won’t get us to our ultimate carbon reduction goal of 80% by 2050. We continue to watch for new technologies and fuels and budget for more efficient vehicles. In the meantime, we’re always looking for new solutions. How do you mitigate your transportation emissions?
*photo by Brad Christensen
Topics: Environment
