Where’s the Carbon?Where’s the Carbon? Optimising the Lake District’s Transport Framework to reduce carbon emissions The UK is committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 34% on 1990 levels by 2020, and by 80% by 2050. But where should we target effort to achieve this?

This document summarises the relative scales of CO2 emissions from different sectors and subsectors of the Lake District’s transport system – by journey purposes, origins and modes. This can then inform the prioritisation of interventions – policy and initiatives. The two main areas of influence are:

• The Transport Framework for a Sustainable Lake District. The 5 work streams will be finessed to optimise carbon reduction. This will involve (i) designing initiatives to tackle the known CO 2

sources, (ii) changing the emphasis of specific initiatives to optimise their carbon reducing potential and (iii) informing prioritisation between initiatives.• Cumbria’s 3rd Local Transport Plan (from 2011). Policy creation will be informed by this work to that a policy framework is created that delivers carbon reduction.

1.1. What proportion of the Lake District’s What proportion of the Lake District’s carbon footprint is from transport & travel?carbon footprint is from transport & travel?

There are 3 answers to this apparently simple question:

1. The English National Park Authorities Association recently estimated the carbon footprints for the nine National Parks in England1. This shows that:

• Per capita carbon footprint for the Lake District is 14.7 tCO2e. This is significantly greater than national and NW regional averages of 7.3t and 7t (20062). If the effective visitor population is added to the resident population, 14.7 t reduces to 7.4 tCO2e.

• All transport within the Lake District contributes 290.2 kt CO2/year, 42.3% of the park’s total carbon footprint

• This is significantly greater than for the other English national parks

Summary & headline findingsSummary & headline findings

This work has been carried out by the LDNPA, January – July 2010. For more information, contact alistair.kirkbride@lakedistrict.gov.uk; 01539 792710

Note on data sources and qualityDeriving robust carbon footprint results for an area is notoriously difficult. The issues encountered here include:• data available from the same year: that used here is from 2006, 2008 or 2009• data from the Lake District itself: Most data relates to Cumbria and is scaled by Lake District populations and visitor numbers • appropriate boundaries: most results here relate to travel around the Lake District. However, we also show that travel to and from the Lake District by visitors is highly significant.• appropriate populations: per capita carbon emissions usually relate to the resident population, whereas in the Lake District, the effective population is doubled with visitors.The data used here were from mainstream sources, principally the 2008 National Travel Survey (DfT / ONS), the 2009 Cumbria visitors survey (Cumbria Tourism), Transport Statistics for Great Britain with other data as appropriate. Details of the data sources with comments on data quality are given in the accompanying “WtC data source summary.DOC”

53.6% of the transport CO2 emissions relating to the Lake District are from visitors getting to or from the park. 29.8% are from visitors flying – even though this only accounts for 7% of visitors

Car use by residents and visitors accounts for 60.4% of carbon emissions of travel around the park.

Goods travel around and across the park accounts for 22.2% of emissions around the park.

Some of these are easier to influence than others, and different partners will have different roles.

% Lake District individual transport CO2

29.8

23.8

11.5

11.0

6.2

5.9

5.7

1.5

1.2

1.0

0.6

0.4

0.3

0.3

0.2

0.1

0.1

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35

O/seas vis to/from plane

UK vis to/from car/van/mbike

Resident car

Vis around - car/van/mbike

Vans

HGV

O/seas vis to/from car/van/mbike

Resident public transport

UK vis to/from train

UK vis to/from bus/coach

Vis around - bus/coach

UK vis to/from coach tour

O/seas vis to/from coach tour

Resident other private

O/seas vis to/from train

Vis around - coach tour

Vis around - train

30.9%

29.5%

4.1%

16.5%

0.8%

1.7%

0.4%

0.4%

15.7% All travelTravel around the LD

2. The remainder of this work has calculated the transport carbon emissions “bottom up” . This involves using the best locally relevant datasets wherever they are available. Excluding all transport outside the park – e.g. by residents or visitors accessing the park. This total comes to 161.3 kt CO2/year. This approach is more useable for estimating the relative impacts of policies or initiatives

3. The “bottom up” calculation that includes all transport relating to the park – including visitor travel to & from the park (including aviation) – totals 431.3 kt CO2/year

Lake District CO2e emissions estimates, 2006

0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500

Industry &commercial: fuel

Agriculture: fuel

Domestic: fuel &products

Transport: Road

Transport: diesel rail

Transport: other

Other

tonnes CO2

0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350

All NPs

Lake District

25.7%

4.2%

21.2%

41.9%

0.2%

0.2%

6.6%

2. Travel 2. Travel withinwithin the Lake District the Lake District

All personal travel by residents (by all modes) in the Lake District produces 57,702 t CO2 /year, 35.7% of that from all transport within the park.

28% of resident travel emissions are from leisure journeys –such as visiting friends & family or going to the cinema. With shopping (20%) and commuting (16%), they make up 64% of residents’ transport emissions.

a a ResidentsResidents

Visitor travel within the Lake District contributes c. 51,611 t CO2/year, 32.0% of that from all transport in the park.

b b VisitorsVisitors

93% of emissions from visitor travel around the park is, unsurprisingly, from the use of cars, vans or motor bikes.

HGV emissions contribute 15.7% of transport emissions, and small vans a further 16.5%.

c c Goods & freightGoods & freight

Commuting, 8174, 16%

Business, 5167, 10%

Education, 1307, 3%

Shopping, 9996, 20%Personal

business, 4166, 8%

Leisure, 13611, 28%

Holiday/ day trip, 4524, 9%

Other, 2869, 6%

walk , 0.0, 0%

bike, 0.0, 0%

coach tour,

613.2, 1%

train, 612.2, 1%

bus/coach, 2769.5,

5%

car, 47616.3,

93%

3. Visitor travel 3. Visitor travel toto the Lake District the Lake District

a a Mode of travelMode of travel

The emissions from visitor travel to the Lake District is greater than all travel within Lake District. While these lie outside NI186 and LTP3, Lake District related policy, initiatives and organisations could potentially influence their reduction.

CO2 - travel to Lake District (global)

UK plane0%

O/seas coach tour1%

O/seas plane47%

O/seas bus/coach

0%

UK bus/coach2%

UK train2%

O/seas car/van/mbike

9%

UK coach tour1%

O/seas train0%

UK car/van/mbike

38%

Emissions from travel to the Lake District is dominated by aviation from overseas followed by car / van use from the UK.

While tackling aviation emissions may be difficult form a Lake District perspective (overseas visitors are probably coming to the UK or Europe anyway), there are many ways to shift UK car trips to the Lake District.

b b Visitor originVisitor origin CO2 - travel to Lake District (global)Southw est

4%London

3% Wales1%

East of England3%E Midlands

3%

W Midlands3%

Scotland3%

Yorkshire & Humber

2%Southeast

8%

North West7%

North/North east4%

Overseas59%

CO2 - travel to Lake District (UK)

Scotland7%

W Midlands8%

East of England

7%

London7%

Wales3%

Southw est10%

E Midlands7%

Yorkshire & Humber

6%

North/North east9%

North West17%

Southeast19%

CO2 - travel to Lake District (UK)

bus/coach, 4,146, 4%

plane, 0, 0%coach tour, 1,836, 2%

train, 5,384, 5%

car/van/mbike, 102,862,

89%

4. Towards action4. Towards action

The Lake District is popular to visitors from a variety of areas. These charts suggest that we need to consider focussing more on changing how people travel from further away whilst encouraging growth in the local visitor market.

These results have been derived to inform action.

The two main outputs are the Transport Framework for a Sustainable Lake District and Cumbria’s Local Transport Plan. The interpretation of these results is made in the accompanying document “WtC interventions.DOC”