Hello and welcome to this series! Before we start, we have a thought experiment for you.
You are in Frankfurt. You want to go to Berlin, 420 km away, as soon as possible. You have
two options: take the Inter City Express train or a Lufthansa flight. Which would you choose?
Think hard before you give your answer. And while you do so, I will give you some information
to help you weigh your options properly.
Welcome back to our green travel series!
In a joint effort between DW Travel and DW Hindi we'll look at the changing situation of air
and plane travel with the focus on making it greener. This is episode number 2 and today
we are looking at getting around Germany by train and plane to see if there are any sustainable
practices that can be applied to my country India.
For us, a mode of transport must have 3 aspects:
It must be fast,
comfortable
and clean.
Or you would say green?
We have picked out a frequently traveled route:
Frankfurt to Berlin which connects Germany's financial and aviation hub with the capital.
Each year, scores of tourists and business travellers commute between both cities.
In this plane versus train debate, we will let the planes make their case first. I am
here at the Frankfurt Airport to see what they are doing to make air travel cleaner and greener.
Despite alarming findings about global warming,
air traffic continued to increase right up until the coronavirus outbreak. In 2019, there
were around 4.5 billion flights worldwide. The Coronavirus pandemic saw a sharp decline
in air travel. However, like every other sector in the global economy, aviation is on track
for a swift recovery. Experts are still hopeful that air travel will double by 2040.
The story is no different in Germany's busiest airport: Frankfurt. It serviced some 71 million
passengers in 2019. This makes it an ideal airport to compare with New Delhi's IGI airport,
which saw a footfall of 69 million passengers in 2019.
From Frankfurt, you can fly to at least 300 destinations worldwide. And there are a total
of 100 airlines that will take you there. There are several flights to other German
cities every day. For example, there are 11 just to Berlin. The flight itself takes just
one hour though getting to and from the airport and going though security, adds several more
hours. Realistically, then, getting from Frankfurt to Berlin takes 4 hours door to door.
Planes are fast. That's no secret. So let's have a look at how green they are. At Frankfurt
airport, a total of 14.7 million liters of kerosine are filled into aircrafts every day.
Fuel, that when burned releases harmful greenhouse gasses, among other things.
Fortunately, efforts are being made to reduce such damaging exhaust fumes and there is plenty
of potential to cut back on greenhouse emissions. Airports are working hard to assure travellers
that they are a ''sustainable airport'.
Opps, plastic!
There are numerous ways for airports to conserve
energy and cut back on CO² emissions, for example:
Using, or generating renewable energy, optimizing thermal insulation and ventilation,
deploying cogeneration units to generate electricity and heat at the same time, and using district
heating or cooling. Other options include installing an energy-efficient
IT infrastructure and lighting system. And last but not least: encouraging passengers
to travel to and from airports by public transport, rather than by car.
In my country, Delhi airport is trying to
do its part to cut emissions. As part of a massive expansion and upgrade project,
they are adding India's first Elevated Cross Taxiway. This dual corridor will reduce
the distance a plane must taxi from runway to various airport terminals. Once the project
is completed in Dec 2022, it will save 55 thousand tonnes of Co2 annually.
The airport also has two Delhi Metro lines running right up to the terminals.
Additionally, there are buses to various destinations in the city.
But making airports more sustainable or greener only solves a part of the problem.
The flights also need to be made more sustainable. Air travel produces more emissions per passenger-kilometre
than any other mode of transportation.
One way to reduce emissions is to make more
efficient engines which is already underway worldwide. Another is to replace or supplement
conventional kerosene jet fuel with sustainable aviation fuel. Sustainable aviation fuel is
produced without using fossil-based resources such as oil, coal, and natural gas.
Instead, it uses alternatives such as plant oils, waste gases and agricultural residues which makes
it cleaner than conventional kerosine. There is another way, too. Passengers or airlines
willing to offset their carbon emissions can chose to donate money to environmental projects
that strive to reduce and capture CO² elsewhere. This method however, has also been criticized
because it focuses more on compensating for your carbon emissions rather than reducing it.
Anyone booking a flight with Germany's Lufthansa,
for example, can use the MyClimate website to calculate how much CO² the trip will emit
and can then opt to donate a corresponding amount of money to climate-protection projects.
Lufthansa is also offering more ways to fly carbon-neutral. They have announced a few
options to minimize the carbon emissions of their flights. Customers can choose to use
Sustainable Aviation Fuel, support certified climate protection projects, or opt for a mix of both.
Now let's get back to our thought experiment:
Getting from Frankfurt to Berlin. The airplanes have spoken. Now it's the time for trains
to present their case. I am at Frankfurt's main station. It takes
just 15 minutes to get here with the local train from Frankfurt Airport.
We have Mr. Gaulke with us, he represents an organisation named Allianz pro Schiene.
'Schiene' is 'railways' in German. So he's pro railway and also represents the rights of
consumers. Thank you for giving us time. Can you please tell us why railways are a better
option, a cleaner option?
Railways are foremost more efficient than
any other means of transport, be it the car, be it by airplane. Airplane is especially
very harmful for environment. When you go for a flight between Munich and Hamburg which
is roughly 600 kilometres by air, the pollution by passenger is 120 kg of harmful CO²,
while the train ride would only be 14 kilograms per passenger. So, it's a huge difference
and there is no real reason for choosing the plane between Munich and Hamburg concerning
time. It makes probably a difference between one hour and two hours when you start from
the centre of Munich to the centre of Hamburg. A train from Frankfurt to Berlin is certainly
the cleaner and arguably the more comfortable option. The fastest direct train will get
you there in four hours. There is also a Rail&Fly option in partnership
with many airlines. With this Rail&Fly option, you can travel by train from one of over 5,600
Deutsche Bahn stations to the airport and back again.
The Company praises itself as the fastest climate protector. Deutsche Bahn plans to
run all its trains on renewable energy by 2040 and to become climate neutral soon after.
India, which has the fourth largest rail network in the world, has already electrified 80 percent
of its 69,000 kilometre-long network and it is moving towards carbon neutrality.
India is on track to electrify its entire railway network by 2023 and it will be carbon
neutral by 2030. They have already ditched conventional lights and installed more energy
efficient LED lights. Before you make up your mind, here is a fun
fact. For routes with high speed trains, journeys up to 500 km are best done by train. If you
take security check and traveling to the airport into account, trains generally take the same
amount of time as flights. And they are greener. So what we really need now build more high
So what we really need now: build more high
speed corridors in India. Like the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Corridor, and Delhi Meerut RRTS.
Dear India, we need more of these. That's all for this episode. Thank you for
watching this. If you liked our video, follow DW Travel. Bye Bye. See you again in the next episode.
Have a great time!