Greenhouse gas emissions of the German travel mobility

© vladimircaribb / Fotolia

German travel mobility volume and greenhouse gas emissions

The project has created a consistent and updateable picture of German travel mobility volume and greenhouse gas emissions. For the travel mobility volume the results of the latest nationwide survey on everyday mobility ("Mobility in Germany 2017") are used. These were mostly supplemented by the dataset from “Verkehr in Zahlen”. Additionally, a survey was carried out in December 2018, focusing on closing data gaps in the travel mobility volume of German residents. A fusion model is set up to combine the various data sources into a consistent quantification of transport volume.

Allocation of travel volume to travel mobility

A heuristic for travel mobility based on the UNWTO definition of tourism (Tourism comprises the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes) is developed within the project. With the application of the heuristic to the fusion model the travel mobility volume is calculated.

Greenhouse gas emissions of travel mobility

The greenhouse gas emissions of tourism have been calculated from the outcome of travel mobility volume calculation and the specific emissions of general (e.g. passenger cars) and tourism-specific (e.g. cruise ships but also general means of transport with typical equipment variants, such as passenger cars with roof boxes) means of transport. Data gaps for travel-specific emission factors have been reduced by modelling. The results are emission factors for the means of transport used in travel mobility in the logic of HBEFA and TREMOD. The datasets produced in the project allow to calculate the emissions from resident’s travel mobility (polluter-pays principle) and domestic travel mobility (territorial principle).