EMISSION FACTORS FOR WALKING AND CYCLING

R91 DAVID A. COLEY APRIL 2001

T.A.Mitchell

Management Summary
In preparing and justifying transportation policies, it is not uncommon to make use of emission factors and we have been asked several times whether walking and cycling result in emissions implicated in global warming. Usually, emission factors are not used for cycling and walking because it is assumed that such activities have zerovalued emissions. This work suggests that this is an invalid approach and estimates UK-based carbon dioxide emission factors for such activities for a large number of individuals. Our analysis gives implied emission factors of 11.40 g of C (as CO2)/km for walking and 8.30 g C (as CO2)/km for cycling. It should be noted that because the resting energy expenditure has been subtracted, these represent true excess emissions. For comparison, the typical value for a gasoline fuelled car is 49.9 g of C (as CO2)/km

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1. INTRODUCTION
Although by definition carbon dioxide exhaled from human metabolic processes is an anthropogenic emission of a greenhouse gas, it is not accounted for within the framework of emission inventories. At first sight this seems sensible because any carbon dioxide exhaled should be part of a closed carbon cycle of: atmosphere, plant, animal, human, atmosphere. However, for humans this cycle is not free-standing and is maintained by various energy inputs. As it is not uncommon to include data on extraction and processing emissions within transport related emission factors, it would seem reasonable to extend this approach to human powered transportation. It is well known that the production of food for the human population requires large amounts of energy (Coley, 1998). Some of this energy is naturally occurring and is required to fuel the bio-chemical processes within the relevant plant or animal; however, additional energy is required for the production and application of agricultural chemicals and the transportation, processing, retail and preparation of the food item in question. This second category of energy expenditure is likely to contain inputs from fossil fuel sources and can therefore be connected with emissions of gases linked to global climate change. The amount of energy required by this anthropogenic category is termed the embodied energy of the food, and ignores the calorific value of the product. The embodied energy differs not only between food items themselves but also between differing agricultural methods, transportation distances and other factors used in the production of otherwise identical items. The origin of the embodied energy in a food, and thus the environmental damage caused by such energy expenditure, will depend firstly on the processes that were used in the production of the item, but also on the mix of fuels and processes used to produce the energy itself. Thus, just as in the case of products such as aluminium and other items, the environmental damage will vary between regions (see for example, Bretz and Fankhauser, 1997; Erickson, Blinge and Lougren 1996; and Edwards and Schelling, 1996). This will be reflected in differing emission factors for similar items. Very little work appears to have been carried out on how the county of origin and the general energy mix within each Country, together with the mix used within the relevant agricultural, industrial and retail conduits varies across the globe for common dietary items. However, the Dutch National Research Programme on Global Air Pollution and Climate Change have produced a database of energy intensities (in terms of MJ per Dutch Florin) for many common items found in a typical Western European diet (Biesot and Moll, 1995). The Dutch study related the energy used in the production of a product to the household expenditure on that product, and analysed the result in terms of income group. At the core of this work was a list of energy intensities for the majority of household items (and services) not just food. This implies that any activity that increases energy expenditure that is matched by an increase in dietary consumption will lead to an increase in fossil fuel use, and hence to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. Recent work (Westerterp, 2000) has re-enforced the message that moderate levels of activity, such as that represented by walking and cycling, do increase annual energy expenditure, and to a greater degree than that provided by more intense activities. This observation suggests the estimation of implied emission factors for various activities. Although the concept of an implied emission factor could be used with any activity, the most natural use is as a comparative measure against replacement activities.

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2. METHOD
Direct emission factors for various transport systems are readily available (IPCC, 1995; DOE, 1996) and are regularly used as part of the justification for national transportation and energy policies (HMSO, 1994). Walking and cycling are often encouraged within such policies, in part because it is assumed that they have zerovalued emission factors. This is clearly not so. At the heart of this work is the estimation of the embodied energy content of 2197 real UK adult diets recorded over a single week. The diets themselves were taken from the Dietary and Nutritional Survey of British Adults 1986-1987 (Gregory et al, 1990). By extracting the amounts of each food in each individual diet, and using the results of Biesot and Moll (1995) and Vringer and Blok (1995) the embodied energy of each of the 2197 individual diets was estimated. In order to do this, the original energy intensity data had to be reduced to embodied energies expressed in units of MJ/kg. This embodied energy (Efood) is the total energy used to produce one kilogram of final product. It encompasses the direct and indirect energy used in the production, transportation and retailing of the product. It is calculated over the entire life cycle of the product; including production, trade and waste disposal (see Engelenburg, et. al., 1994, for details). In the figures used here, it does not include the energy used in the preservation and preparation of the food within the household. As mentioned previously, the value used also does not include the calorific value of the food (Ediet), or the naturally provided energy source used by the bio-chemical processes during growth; for example solar energy used by photosynthesis within a plant. The ratio of Efood/Ediet, can take a wide range of values dependent on food type and origin (Coley, 1998). By aggregating these ratios across all the recorded diets, the average ratio (Efood/Ediet) for the UK was found to be 5.75/1. i.e. on average nearly six times the amount of fossil-fuel energy is expended in the production of food items for a UK individuals diet than is provided by a diet of such items.

3. RESULTS
This ratio can then be used together with published data for energy expenditure when walking and cycling to create implied emission factors. Although to some extent energy expenditure depends on considerations such as sex, race, height, age and rest metabolism, (Mahadeva, 1968) has shown that the variation is small with all but body mass. Using published values for cycling of, 7.5 kcal/min (Passmore, 1967) (65 kg body mass); walking, 4.0 kcal/min (McArdle, 1994) (64 kg body mass, 4.83 km/h); and at rest, 1.5 kcal/min (Sharkey, 1997) (68.18 kg body mass); together with a factor for mass adjustment of 1.47% per 1kg above or below 65kg (Sharkey, 1997), allows the excess energy expenditure beyond that of resting to be calculated. The result being 30.66 kcal/km for walking and 22.31 kcal/km for cycling. Using these figures, together with my calculated ratio Efood/Ediet of 5.75 and an emission factor for the primary energy mix within the UK of 1.55x10-5 g of C (as CO2) per J (DUKES, 2000), leads to implied emission factors of 11.40 g of C (as CO2)/km for walking and 8.30 g C (as CO2)/km for cycling. It should be noted that because the resting energy expenditure has been subtracted, these represent true excess emissions. For comparison the typical value for a gasoline fuelled car is 49.9 g of C (as CO2)/km (IPCC, 1995). Although these implied emission factors will take slightly different values at different walking and cycling speeds the variation will be very small as the variation
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in energy expenditure is a very weak function of speed (McArdle, 1994). The majority of the variation will come from the spectrum of the embodied energies of the individuals diets, with = 2.64g (see Figure 1).
160 140

Number of individuals

120 100 80 60 40 20 0 5 10 15 20 25 30

g C (as CO2)/km
Figure 1. Frequency distribution of implied emission factors for walking from the recorded diets of 2197 UK adults. Mean = 11.4 g of C (as CO2)/km, = 2.64g.

4. CONCLUSION
The use of implied emission factors in the analysis of transportation policies will be seen by many as controversial especially as such policies often strive not only to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, but also reduce congestion, improve local air quality and improve human health (Booth 2000, Grundy 1999). However, such concerns do not reduce the validity of the approach. More importantly, the use of implied emission factors creates an environmental accounting procedure that indicates the importance of reducing the ratio Efood/Ediet. If the average embodied energy of a populations diet can be reduced, then it is axiomatic that the level of fossil-fuel use will also fall, and thus the implied emission factors reported here will be reduced. Although the use these implied emission factors in the construction of transportation policies is a sensible one, it is important not to apply the concept within the framework of an emissions inventory of the form used by the IPCC, as this risks double counting with the agricultural and energy transportation sectors.

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Passmore, R & Durnin, J (1967) Energy, Work & Leisure Heinemann, London, p88 Sharkey, B (1997) Fitness & Health Human Kinetics, Champaign, p239 Vringer, K and Blok, K (1995) The direct and indirect energy requirements of households in the Netherlands Energy Policy 23 (10) 893-910 Westerterp, K R (2001) Nature 6828, p539

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