Blog from January, 2023

On Tuesday January 24 2023 about 10 people from IMG met with colloquium speaker Cyril Brunner to discuss our views on carbon compensation. A couple of survey questions started off the discussion led by Brunner Lukas. As it turned out about half of the participants had personally used a compensation scheme before to make up for CO2 emissions. Overall the attitude towards compensation was somewhat mixed in the room as the survey results below show

Compensating emissions is a good thing overall.

A Strongly agree
B Somewhat agree
C Neither agree or disagree
D Somewhat disagree
E Strongly disagree

 Some further discussion revealed that most participants see the option to remove CO2 as an integral part of achieving carbon neutrality and as positive in principle. But several issues in the practical implementation remain open leading to this result. One prominent recent example that shows the real world problem is a scandal that was revealed by a network of journalists (e.g., https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe). Another discussion was centered about choosing the most cost efficient option, versus reliable or trustworthy options. Finally, Cyril also laid out some of the differences between compensating emissions by avoiding them at another place (which can never truly lead to net-zero) versus active carbon removal for example by direct air capture.

Another topic which was discussed was who should be responsible for emissions in a work related context:

If I have to fly for work my employer should compensate my emissions.

A Strongly agree
B Somewhat agree
C Neither agree or disagree
D Somewhat disagree
E Strongly disagree

One argument was, that for many of our travels the decision to go or not go lies with ourselves to a large degree which could mean that we personally have a certain responsibility. But overall we agreed that ultimately it should be the employer paying for compensation. University of Vienna does is currently working on a sustainability roadmap (https://nachhaltigkeit.univie.ac.at/en/sustainability-strategy/roadmap-for-climate-neutrality/) but at least in their communication of actions they may need to improve:

The University of Vienna already compensates emissions from air travel.

A Yes
B No
C I don't know

Finally, we collected companies that offer compensation options and discussed some of their advantages and prices:

What options for compensation (that you would recommend) do you know?

Thanks for all participants for an interesting and engaged discussion, in particular to our guest Cyril Brunner!

short summary: Prof. Götz Bokelmann and i took advantage of the lesson-free holidays and made a one day trip to Falkenstein in Lower Austria (station A001A) and Gbely in Slovakia (A333A).

pic1: map with the two destinations

Trip diary from 29.12.2022

forecast for this day: sunny, partly cloudy, temperatures up to 4°C, real conditions: very volatile in the morning (from cloudy to foggy and sunny), but in the afternoon maily sunny. Temperatures above 4°C.

Falkenstein A001A

The journey to Falkenstein was a bit difficult. We went the A22 in direction north and left the exit Sierndorf. The weather conditions always changed, sometimes there was a very dense fog. But at arrival in Falkenstein there was in southern direction sun and from the northern part a heavy cloud. Up the hills in the wineyards near the castle, there is the station hidden in an WW2 firing position. The reason of our visit there was because the power was always temporarly going off. There is no power supply, so all the power come from two solar panels in different locations feeding two 100 Ah batteries in the station itself. Visiting one of the panels was not very easy, it´s hidden deep in the bushes, but all two look intact, as well as the wiring. A voltage test in the station confirmed this estimation. So the panels were good, we had to replace only the two heavy lead-batteries.

After all routine tasks we pack our things and left to Slovakia.

pic5: wineyard view from near the station entrance A001A

Gbely A333A

In Hohenau near the border we took a small break for fuel, buying lunch and call to Petr Kolinsky. He managed to call the slovakian station owner for he comes and opens it. It is located in an old distillery. The main task there was to replace the modem and test it, because it is the first AVM-modem in SK. So after a small break near the border we soon arrived there and the owner was already waiting there for us. Inside an old garage in the building, there is the station and many stuff is stored there too. The difficulty there is to get across all the stuff for the maintenance. We installed the new modem, a power multi connector and changed the disks. A levelling of the sensor was nearly not necessary, only calibration and testing. The good thing was, that the test with the AVM-modem worked in SK without issues. So we can start implement this device on all slovakian stations in the near future. 

...stay tuned!