Last week, the first training session “Aspiring to carbon neutrality through mobility management” took place with Luxmobility, Carbone 4, EIT Urban Mobility and IMS. We chose to invite our tenants to participate with us.
Here are the main points and lessons we learned
Some impactful figures:
The average carbon footprint of a Luxembourg citizen is 16t of CO2 per year … while the threshold to reach the objectives is ideally 2t of CO2 per year.
Mobility represents 17% of Luxembourg’s carbon footprint.
Reducing the size of the car can generate 60% of emission savings
Switching from thermal to electric cars can reduce emissions by up to 70% (including manufacturing)
Taking the train is 95% less emissions than the car!
In Luxembourg, bicycle use has increased from 2% to 5% in 2 years.
The most important thing is action
Climate change is here and we need to adapt by reducing our impact and the impact of our activities on our resources.
It is important to understand that finding the culprit and blaming the neighbor for not doing anything does not bring anything to cope: +5° means physical risks for humans and their habitat (so us!) and transition risks (politics, taxes, regulations etc…)
The carbon footprint is only an indicator of dependency. It serves to measure our dependence on the elements and is an integral part of the first phase of action:
1 / Measure! we can not act on something we do not know.
2 / Engage with all stakeholders, internal and external to the company. Especially the management: you need the support of the management to make things happen.
3 / Act: take concrete and measurable measures to really impact in the right way. For example:
Before planting more trees, we must first stop cutting them down. It sounds simple but that’s the whole point. The contribution is much more powerful than the compensation! explains Christina Stuart from Carbon 4
And in terms of mobility?
Mobility must be adapted to our uses, explains Patrick Van Egmond, sometimes we just go to the office and come back, and sometimes we have to do the shopping, drop off the children, etc., which makes it difficult to use alternatives to the car.
What is also important to note is that carpooling, taking public transport or cycling, even one day a week, has a significant impact!
The average home-work footprint in Luxembourg is 1710 kgCO2e/pers.year, it drops to 1420 if we increase carpooling from 1.2 to 1.6 persons per vehicle!
This is why the mobility plan is useful for companies. It allows to spot possible synergies, to identify the possibilities of optimization of each one, to give ideas to the employees and to the HR to optimize the mobility budget beyond the simple car leasing.
The mobility game is a good tool to raise awareness and gives the basics and the levers of action:
- Use the car in a sober way (for example a family car pollutes almost 3 times less than an SUV!)
- Change your mode of transportation (the train is 95% cleaner than the car)
- Travelling less far (a trip from Paris to New York is 2 tons of CO2, i.e. our entire ideal annual quota)
- Travel less often
The mobility advantages of Campus Contern
This training was also an opportunity to see that many of our initiatives were going in the right direction in our offices:
– The shuttle bus from the train station to the office,
– The shared car,
– The bicycle parking lots
– The 128 charging stations
– Carpooling
All of these ingredients that make the options for a smoother mobility possible. Our mobility plan is in progress, we will see what other things we can put in place to do best for our community.
Many thanks to our tenants for their participation and to the various stakeholders.
Resources:
Luxmobility to access this training https://luxmobility.eu/
EIT Urban Mobility provides free trainings and explainer videos at https://urbanmobilitycourses.eu/ (the “Applied” trainings are chargeable because they are customized, but everything else is free to access 😊)
