Sunday, December 16, 2007

A cheaper, greenerway to meet

Business News - Monday December 17, 2007

Bangkok Post

A cheaper, greenerway to meet

Already under fire from environmentalists for its greenhouse gas emissions, the aviation industry is set to come under direct assault from telecommunications and IT companies targeting the business travel market. At the UN Framework for Climate Change Conference in Bali last week, executives of Climate Risk Pty Ltd were publicising a report prepared for the Australian telecoms company Telstra, saying that multinational organisations could save billions of dollars in costs and cut millions of tons in greenhouse gas emissions by replacing long-haul, short-duration business travel with videoconferencing.

Dr Karl Mallon, director of science and systems at Climate Risk, said the same factors that revolutionised mobile phones would apply in the case of videoconferencing as improving technological quality, higher bandwidth and lower costs would make it an increasingly feasible option for any company or institution in a globalised, interconnected world.

He said that in Australia, a company setting up a videoconferencing room for A$250,000, plus the time charges, would soon recoup the investment both in actual costs as well as increased productivity by staff members who wouldn't need to waste time on aircraft and in airports.

It would also allow executives to maintain a better work/life balance and help countries meet their national targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, he said.

Telstra is marketing the service along with other IT giants Cisco and HP, which will be providing other components of the videoconferencing system. Both have offices all over the world and highly mobile workforces.

Cisco is cited as saying that, since adopting the technology internally, it has set a worldwide target of reducing its own air travel by 20%. The Australian division of Cisco has reduced air travel by 16% in less than one year.

The emissions and costs of aviation represent just one sector looked at in the report, along with buildings, road transport and renewable energy production.

Dr Mallon said, ''Transport today is about air travel, car use, freight movements, commercial fleets,'' said Dr Mallon. ''At the same time, telecommunications go to every building, every office, house and ... potentially to every vehicle and every person.

''That's an unparalleled level of access. So if you can find a way to deliver an emission abatement solution down that conduit, you know that the level of penetration is potentially exceedingly high.''

The report notes that Australia has the highest emissions per capita of any OECD country with the equivalent of 26 tonnes per person of carbon dioxide per year, against 2.5 tonnes for China.

''Domestic aviation in Australia alone produces 5.1 million tonnes of CO2 per year and international aviation using fuels procured in Australia gives rise to approximately twice these emissions,'' the report says. ''Yet because aviation emissions occur at altitude the warming effect is as much as 2.7 times higher. Based on international studies about 50% of short-haul air travel may be for business.

''Business air travel can be exceedingly time inefficient. High-value executives spend valuable hours and sometimes days in transit, a significant waste of human resources with a direct dollar value to their companies.

''Long-distance, short-duration travel can be effectively replaced with 'in-person' high-definition, high fidelity, online conferencing that is significantly more efficient in cost, time, energy and emissions.

The report estimates that the emissions saving that would result from replacing air travel with videoconferencing could be as much as 2.4 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent per year through direct fuel use reduction _ or 6.5 million tonnes when the increased warming effect of aviation emissions at altitude is included. Excluding the latter, the avoided emissions are equivalent to 0.43% of total national emissions. The financial value of the avoided spending on air travel is $2.2 billion.

Although aircraft are slowly becoming more efficient, ''this is outweighed by increased demand, and as a result, aviation greenhouse emissions are rapidly increasing,'' the report says.The report can be downloaded free from http://www.telstra.com.au/abouttelstra/csr/docs/climatefullreport.pdf.pdf

Imtiaz Muqbil is executive editor of Travel Impact Newswire, an e-mailed feature and analysis service focusing on the Asia-Pacific travel industry.

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