The climate impact from international aviation was 2.4% of the world’s total climate impact in 2018, and is expected to grow. International regulation of this impact is not aligned with trajectories to stay below 1.5 degrees C of global warming. Conventional approaches to allocating climate impact to international aviation also lack one of the important drivers for air travel: tourism. Existing studies have focused on the carbon footprint of residents’ outbound air travel, but there is a lack of focus on the climate impact from inbound air travel. This article quantifies the climate impact of inbound air travel, and presents it alongside the impact of outbound air travel, to get a full picture of the climate impact of tourism-driven air travel and provide insights for tourism’s decision-makers. This was done in a case study for Sweden. The results show that the emissions from inbound air travel have grown 3 times more than emissions from outbound air travel each year, at a faster rate than the yearly growth for all international air travel. Responsibility for the climate impacts of inbound and outbound air travel is discussed, along with further actions such as demarketing and focusing on closer source markets.

Changes in travel behaviour are needed to tackle the climate impact associated with long-distance flights, including a switch to sustainable transport modes. In this paper, we analyse scenarios of carbon footprint reduction associated with a switch from flights to night trains for holidays in Europe for the case of Sweden, including outbound, inbound and domestic tourism. We use a prospective lifecycle assessment framework combined with results from a stated preference experiment to determine the impact of future mode shift behaviours. Our results indicate that a mode shift could be triggered by progressive night train policies resulting in (i) fewer transfers and (ii) price levels similar to those of flights. The shifts from flights to night trains could result in 9% lower cumulative carbon footprint in relation to a baseline travel demand scenario for the period 2025–2050. Decarbonization of long-distance travel in line with the Paris Agreement would likely require a combination of many different types of measures including a shift to low-carbon fuels.

In many industrialised countries, the climate impact from long-distance travel is greater than that from short-distance travel. In this paper, we present five scenarios for long-distance travel in 2060, which are consistent with a 67% probability of limiting global warming to 1.8 degrees. The scenarios concern travel by the Swedish population, but per capita travel volume and fuel use could be generalised globally. A key result is that all scenarios require reductions in Swedish per capita air travel in the range of 38-59% compared to 2017. The direct effect on air travel of implementing a high-speed rail network in Sweden and Northern Europe was found to be modest. A higher emission reduction could be achieved if mixed mode trips comprising rail and air legs were more widely adopted. Finally, the pros and cons of future aviation fuels are discussed, the main candidates being biofuel, electrofuel, and liquid hydrogen.

Emissions of greenhouse gases from tourism transport are rising globally, with air transport accounting for the largest share. Although travel is not likely to decrease drastically, people could travel differently, and still have similar experiences. This study aims to map the emissions from air travel and analyse the theoretical potential for emissions reduction by changing transport mode and destinations, and the readiness potential for emissions reduction based on tourists’ stated readiness to change their travel behaviour. The theoretical potential was assessed by analysing alternative trips to closer destinations and using transport modes with lower emissions or through virtual meetings. The readiness potential was assessed by a survey designed to capture people’s stated readiness to change their behaviour. The results show a theoretical potential for an emissions reduction of 67%, while the readiness potential is 26%. About half of the readiness potential for reductions is from changing destination, while only a small share is from changing transport mode. This shows that, when accounting for people’s readiness to change behaviour, destination choice has a greater potential to reduce emissions compared to transport mode choice. This finding has implications for policy makers in designing policy measures to reduce emissions. 

Denna rapport har tagits fram inom forskningsprogrammet Mistra Sustainable Consumption – från nisch till mainstream som engagerar forskare från olika vetenskapliga discipliner och samhällspartners från offentlig sektor, näringsliv och civilsamhälle. Syftet med programmet är att stimulera en övergång till mer hållbar konsumtion. Forskningen är finansierad av Mistra, Stiftelsen för miljöstrategisk forskning, samt med medfinansiering från samtliga deltagande universitet och samhällspartners.