Random EV thoughts.....

Does anyone know if there's any good transport emissions calculators? Ones that accept different modes of transport and give reliable answers

I'm in a slightly annoying dilemma at the moment, basically at some point in the summer I would like to travel with the great city of Eindhoven with my family and return a week later. We don't need a car there, so the options are as follows:

1. Fly direct to Eindhoven, get bus/taxi to destination
2. Fly to Amsterdam, get train to Eindhoven (more options for flights)
3. Get ferry to UK, drive to Eindhoven and back

So the environmental choice would be to not fly and get the ferry, right? I'll be in Greta's good books then

Except the ferry costs about €200 more than options 1 or 2. Now I get that I'm bringing a car in option 3, which wouldn't fit in Ryanair's carry on, but I only need the car to travel to and from the destination, and that's only because it's cheaper and easier than British rail

That's not counting the extra time and expense of staying overnight on the way there and back. I don't count that as an expense since I'd be expanding the holiday and doing more stuff like seeing London as well. So in the interests of keeping things fair I'm only comparing the transport costs

Funnily enough, I actually have no concerns about charging en route, I've plenty of range and would be doing at most a single charging stop per day

I just find it really annoying that to travel remotely environmentally friendly incurs a massive cost increase, so I'll probably go with flying instead. Greta won't be happy with me 😂

Hence my ask for an emissions calculator, I'm trying to mitigate my guilt somewhat in the process

PS - Sorry for the OT rant 😁

True, but planes need to have an occupancy rate in order to be cost effective. If the %age of PAX is too low, carriers reduce the numbers of flights.

OP, if you drink wine you should stock the car on the way back in Northern France. We save around €200 a year doing that. Or end up drinking more wine...

I already have a big enough backlog of booze to get through 🤣

I think you have your work cut out for your either way whether its by car or by air. I like the the driving option as I think it could work well. You could plan plenty of stops around Supercharging. Not so easy when your in a tin can in the sky with a baby that cant equalise! But you get it over and done with once each way. Good luck with what ever way you choose!

True enough, it's not easy going on holiday 😂

I think my wife would prefer the flying option and generally keeping her stress levels down means that my stress levels also stay down

Plus the kids keep asking me to go on an airplane (we line beside Dublin airport, so get to watch everyone else going on holidays 😭)

Ah well, there's always next time for the road trip 😁

True, boats should have sails, literally free transportation

Although, if you're only doing 4 knots because of lack of sunshine, it doesn't really matter as long as the bar is fully stocked 🍺🍹

They do have sails....

And they've worked fine for thousands of years..

These days the top single handed lads will do the 45,000km round the world race in in or around 75 days. The first solo non stop voyage in 1968/9 took 312 days.

We haven't even scratched the surface in terms of the potential to harness wind power.

A brief google finds a "rule of the thumb" of 3% for each 1000 feet or translated in metric units 1% for each 100m of altitude. As you said not very important here.

I meant the Silent yachts specifically (no I'm not counting the kite, only works when the wind is behind you 😁)

But yes, I think wind power is definitely making its way back into sea transportation. There's designs for kites and sails to be put on container ships, and with the bans on high sulphur fuels and the increased in gas prices, I can see those designs becoming reality soon

I did a very similar calculation a while ago, except the destination was Bordeaux.

I fired up the spreadsheet again, and adapted for your case...(I should say, I bear no responsibility for the accuracy of these numbers!)

Assumptions

-4 passengers

-All EV Charging at an energy mix comparable to UKs

-the following input values:

Using the numbers, and assuming you're going Dublin -> Holyhead -> Dover -> Calais -> Eindhoven on the landbridge, versus flying the great circle distance Dublin to Eindhoven yields the following:

That's total CO2, one way. So doesn't account for any other emissions etc. So the question is what is ~450 kg CO2 worth to you and your family?

edit: I should say the Amsterdam option will almost certainly be the worst for the environment. Similar flight length to Eindhoven but definitely more taxiing by the plane on the ground and then whatever emissions you create by getting the train. So it will be just 515Kg plus plus.

No problem, not that complicated...

For Airline it was: # of passengers x distance x CO2 intensity per km per person i.e. 4 x 820x 157 = 514,960 gCO2 = 514.96kg

For Boat/EV it was similar methodology:

EV part: Electricity Intensity x (Consumption/100) x driving distance = 233 x (18/100) x 893 = 37,452gCO2 = 37.4KG

Boat Part: gCO2 per km x distance -> (130 + (3*18.5)) x 190 = 35,150 gCO2 = 35kg

Emission factors for ferries have 2 values, 1 is for Car + Driver (130) and another (18.5) for Foot Passengers. Thus I modelled the family of 4 as 1 car + driver and 3 foot passengers.

Add the EV and Boat = 72.4kg (the small difference is just rounding!)

I did a lot of work with emission factors back in college, and they are littered with error and inaccuracy. However, as a a first order analysis they are recognised as being very functional.

Impressive maths and the ferries sure are a bit more efficient than I thought. They do have lots of dead weight per passenger. Does that carbon intensity calculation consider the much greater freight capacity per passenger compared to a plane, do you know? The passengers are almost an afterthought for many operators and the freight is what keeps the ferries going and that's even a greater incentive to traveling by a ferry/EV combo.

@crisco10 - thanks for sharing that. Quite shocking that flying would generate roughly 5 times as much emissions as driving your car on your own for a trip like that.

To use those base rates to compare a transatlantic trip from Dublin to New York (about 5k km) for a single passenger without car would be even more stark. Boat: 5000 * 18.5 = 93kg, plane 5000 * 157 = 785kg. Greta had a point there. Although that's just CO2, not so sure if the figures are as stark if you compare other emissions that boats are not good at

And to put things into perspective, a quick google shows that 1kW of solar PV panels installed, offsets 1400kg of CO2. This means with my 10kW of PV, I would fully offset a return flight for my family of 5 to California every 10 months or to Australia every 18 months

As @unkel said though, it's only CO2. If you were to assess it based on Particulate Matter (which I assume is where ferries and other Heavy Fuel oil burners are terrible), the equation is different.

It's also driven to a degree by the EV being used and not ICE. If it was ICE car with emissions of about 180 gCO2/km, the landbridge CO2 triples to about 210Kg of CO2 one way.

I'm not officially trading my carbon credits, no. Maybe I should. It made Tesla billions from other companies having to give them free money for their sins of producing polluting internal combustion engine vehicles and they were unable to make anything else 😂

But on a serious note, I would be happy to strive for carbon neutrality in my home / family. Not sure where I am at that.