• Question: whats more carbon friendly, a small plane or a big coach

    Asked by richardd to Andrew, Daniel, Hayley, Natalia, Peta on 22 Nov 2011. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Peta Foster

      Peta Foster answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      I would certainly expect it to be a big coach because i think it takes a lot of energy to get something into the air. however lets hope that bog coach has it’s tires pumped up and an efficient engine 🙂

    • Photo: Daniel Scully

      Daniel Scully answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      Comparing a bus and a small plane is difficult because they take different numbers of passengers.

      Actually a small light engined propeller plane is probably better than a coach if you’re only taking two people. But a coach can take 50 people… making it much more carbon friendly for a large group.

      It’s very difficult to come across any numbers which are easy to compare.
      This is mainly because there are so many variables that it’s difficult to choose some numbers which are a fair comparison.

      Here’s some I did manage to find for an example journey:

      Carbon comparison – London to Newquay (257 miles = 420 km)
      * By Car: Carbon cost: 0.07 tons of CO2, one way
      * By Rail: Carbon cost: 0.02 tons of CO2, one way
      * By Plane: Carbon cost: 0.12 tons CO2, one way

      These numbers are no doubt for a jet-powered plane though.

    • Photo: Hayley Smith

      Hayley Smith answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      I’m going to wait for a scientist with far more expertise in this area to prove me wrong…but…I have seen coaches that are powered by biofuels (and my boss runs his car on vegetable oil etc), but I have never heard of a plane running on such fuels, they’re still kerosine based, yeh?

      So I’m going to say that, big coaches, could probably be the more carbon friendly as they have the potential to be run using other fuels (although not many currently are).

      But again…just a guess!

    • Photo: Andrew Cairns

      Andrew Cairns answered on 22 Nov 2011:

      Busses can have a lot of technology built in to recover energy, and can be run on electricity and have the potential to be run on Hydrogen fuel etc. As far as I know, planes can only run on hydrocarbon fuel (?)

      Anyway, I would say a coach, depending on the distance. I have a feeling if you’re going half way around the world that planes are actually not that bad, especially the new larger superjumbos (A380) or the light 777.

      As Dan’s statistics show however is that trains are usually the best way to get around!

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