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carbon offset trips...

To ensure we're reducing our emissions before we offset our trips, there's a lot of work that goes on in the background. Read on to find out more about assessments, certifications and how we're managing our carbon.

assessment

To approach this immense profile of work, we divided the assessments into two parts: trips and business operations. Greenhouse gas emissions generated as a result of stationary energy use, transportation and waste generation and disposal were assessed in accordance with the GHG Protocol (A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard Revised Edition, World Resource Institute & World Business Council for Sustainable Development - 2007). Information relating to energy use and waste generation and disposal rates were based on data provided by Sustainability Victoria and the United Nations Statistics Division. Emission factors were derived from a number of sources including the Department of Climate Change (DCC), Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change and the World Resource Institute.

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reduction

Intrepid Travel aims to provide fun, affordable and sustainable travel that is beneficial to local communities. Our Responsible Travel approach is and always has been our commitment to operating and travelling in a way that is socio-culturally, environmentally, and economically responsible. Our journey to carbon neutrality is only an extension of what we have already been doing.

Intrepid's carbon reduction strategy has a three-pronged approach of endeavouring to:

  1. reduce our carbon emissions wherever possible;
  2. educate our staff, travellers and suppliers on ways they can pro-actively reduce emissions and their environmental impacts; and
  3. offset the balance of emissions through investment into sound carbon offset schemes.

Travelling in small groups, with an average of 10 travellers means that we minimise both our environmental and socio-cultural impacts. We are able to be more readily accommodated in small locally owned guest houses, homestays and small hotels and use local transport, thereby minimising our demand for purpose built air-conditioned large hotels and chartered transport, reducing fuel consumption and possible negative impacts of large developments.

We consider the following when choosing any element in one of our trips:

  • Local Services: We engage locally-owned and operated tours thereby supporting local people. As a result, the services we use don't involve long and carbon-intensive supply chains.
  • Accommodation: As much as possible, we look for accommodation built using local materials reducing transportation of materials or fittings long distance.
  • Ventilation: We seek to use, where suitable, natural ventilation avoiding the need for air-conditioning systems. Choosing naturally ventilated simple accommodation reduces our carbon emissions by avoiding air-conditioned hotels with unnecessary or excessive electrical appliances.
  • Local Transport: We use local public transport wherever we can to reduce fuel usage and therefore carbon emissions output. Travelling the way the locals do also lets us socialise with the people and provides opportunities for travellers to invest more money into local communities through purchase of tickets, refreshments, souvenirs and services along the trip.
  • Water Conservation: We support initiatives that encourage conservative use of water such as low-flow shower roses. While water itself doesn't generate emissions, hot water does so needs to be managed sustainably.
  • Local Food: We endeavour to include and strongly encourage our travellers to eat local non- processed or minimally processed food. This reduces the 'embodied energy' (energy consumed through production and transport) of the food and refreshments consumed.
  • Water Bottles: Provide purified drinking water bottle refills from water 'bubblers' or "bidones de agua"... to avoid unnecessary buying of plastic bottles and the subsequent waste disposal issues. In addition to the water in bottles, the production of a 1 litre plastic bottle takes 2 litres of water and 200ml of oil. Therefore for every 1 litre of water sold, 3 litres of water are used.
  • Local Goods: Our leaders facilitate travellers' identification and knowledge of authentic locally produced crafts that helps to support these local industries and we encourage travellers to use some local language to bargain or barter for these items and keep the prices fair.
  • Avoided deforestation: Intrepid avoids accommodation where the water is heated by burning timber. As deforestation is the biggest environmental problem facing Peru followed by subsequent water shortages, we encourage initiatives that avoid contributing to these problems.
  • Economic Empowerment: Economic empowerment of local communities through tourism can help improve education and health services, water supplies and sanitation and reduce the dependence on non-sustainable livelihoods such as deforestation.
  • Local Employment: We use local leaders and local guides so that we are learning about the culture and way of life directly from those who live it and put money into local hands and economies. We can particularly learn from indigenous rural communities about their relationship to the land and how they have practices sustainable agriculture for centuries.
  • Recycling: Beyond all of the above, our Intrepid leaders also provide travellers with awareness on principles of reduce, reuse, recycle and appropriate waste disposal

Intrepid Travel will continue to look for ways of improving what we do on our trips.

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managing our carbon

Our trips have always been designed to have a low impact on the environment and we're always looking at ways to further reduce our impact. Over the years we've made our head office in Melbourne, Australia a pretty environmentally friendly place. We are now working on broadening these practices and reducing our carbon emissions across all our global offices. We work very closely with organisations like the Australian Conservation Foundation to ensure we are following best environmental practice.

What we're up to in the Melbourne offices...

  • In 2007, we completed a comprehensive energy and water audit identifying where reductions could be made.
  • The Melbourne offices are relocating to a new building in 2010. We are closely working with the builders and interior designers on this project to incorporate Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) Principles in the new office design.
  • We are using 100% Green Power energy (where available) in all our Australian offices and retail stores.
  • We have reviewed our lighting and have successfully 'de-lamped' unnecessary bulbs and replaced incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents where possible.
  • For many years we have had a 'reduce, reuse and recycle' policy for our paper usage. All office paper and paper products are recycled where possible and we purchase Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accredited paper or similarly sustainably sourced paper.
  • We have implemented a composting system in our offices collecting our food scraps, tea bags and coffee grounds!
  • We believe everyone should see The Inconvenient Truth. To encourage them, we offered Intrepid Express readers refunds for up to 10,000 movie tickets. 3,900 people took up our offer and we refunded AU$38,766 in ticket costs to help create awareness around the impacts of climate change.
  • Initiatives have been taken to increase the efficiency of air-conditioning and heating systems such as the reprogramming of thermostats, draft sealing and replacing inefficient heating systems with those using much less energy.
  • The balance of office emissions will be offset.
  • A 'Climate Change Group' of staff helped to initiate and implement efficiency measures. This has been replaced by an international 'Carbon Group', represented in 6 continents who work to implement our carbon vision and promote on-going carbon reduction activities globally.
  • Staff have been provided with 'Climate Saver' packs of 6 compact fluorescent lights to install in their homes.
  • Subsidized home energy and water audits have been offered to all Australian based staff.
  • Intrepidites are a pretty active bunch and many walk or cycle to work. We encourage use of public transport and for those who do need to drive, encourage car pooling.
  • We're conscious that our brochures consume a lot of paper, so since 2000 we've had an annual tree planting day. In the last year staff and travellers planted over 1,100 trees and shrubs.
  • We are also working with our suppliers to learn more about how we can increase efficiency and therefore, reduce emissions in our supply chain.
  • At the forefront of our quest to become carbon neutral is Intrepid CEO and co-founder Darrell Wade. "Climate change is perhaps the greatest challenge the world has ever faced. We believe that as a travel company it is time for us to become a part of the solution, rather than just a part of the problem."

What we're up to in our other offices...

In 2008 Intrepid conducted carbon emissions assessments for all of our major offices and we will continue to conduct business/operations assessments annually. We are working with our regional offices to create customised emissions reduction strategies based on these assessments.

Our trips...

To take our commitment one step further, we have also conducted detailed assessments on 38 trips such as our Classic Cuba, Roam China, Moorish Spain and Tanzania Adventure to calculate the emissions from these trips. Our passengers are now able to select these Carbon Offset trips and have their footprint on that trip neutralised. The emissions released on our trips are already relatively low, but we're creating strategies reduce them even further.

Future steps

Ultimately we aim to have all our operations carbon neutral by 2010. Intrepid will be developing a robust carbon management framework to help us measure and develop targets to lessen our carbon footprint by following the principles of;

  • avoid
  • reduce
  • switch to alternative
  • sequester or store
  • assess
  • offset the remaining emissions

This framework will assist us to manage and reduce our footprint on the environment.

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certifications

The offset projects endorsed by Intrepid have been verified under "fully fledged carbon offset standards" which offer standards for accounting; monitoring, verification and certification; and finally, registration and enforcement systems. These include the CDM, VER+ and CCX and once the registries are established, the Voluntary Carbon Standard (expected to be launched in September 2008) and the Gold Standard (GS). The CarbonNeutral Company is the only carbon offset provider to operate a publically accessible carbon transaction registry so you can be assured that any offset provided on behalf of Intrepid is legitimate. For more information see http://www.carbonneutral.com/pages/Offsetprojectregistry.asp

The Carbon Offset Trips are being offset by four projects with the CarbonNeutral Company that are certified under the VCS standard and one under the VER+ standard. The CarbonNeutral company commissions PricewaterhouseCoopers annually to assure customers that the credits they purchase are valid and retired correctly.

For more information about the CarbonNeutral Company's quality assurance, please go to http://www.carbonneutral.com/pages/carbonstrategy.asp

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where does my money go?

Intrepid is offsetting the emissions through the CarbonNeutral Company. They have committed to providing us with carbon credits from the following 4 projects:

Renewable Energy Projects
Jamnagar Wind Power Project - India
Portfolio mix: 45.5%
Standard: Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS)

This project sees the construction of a number of new wind turbines in India. By providing renewable energy, the project helps to reduce India's reliance on fossil fuels for electricity generation. The project is expected to generate emission reductions of more than 200,000 tCO2 equivalent between 2006 and 2008, verified to the Voluntary Carbon Standard.

This project supports the construction and operation of new wind turbines at various sites in the states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Karnataka. The wind turbines have a combined capacity of 147MW. India's future energy requirements are forecast to rise substantially in order to meet its economic and development objectives and it is predicted that the country will need to expand electricity supply by up to seven times today's production levels. At present, the primary source of electricity is from generators powered by coal.

The wind power industry is, however, developing rapidly, and will help India on to a cleaner development path. Nonetheless, it is in most cases a more expensive way of generating electricity than conventional fossil fuels, and carbon finance plays a major role in making wind farms in India commercially viable.

This project will provide reliable, renewable power to the electricity grid and will directly benefit nearby villages through the provision of local employment. All parties involved in the design, construction and operation of the wind farms are Indian, so the project helps to develop the wind power industry locally and sustainably, as well as increasing the country's energy capacity in a clean and renewable way.

Sichuan Province Hydro Power Project - China
Portfolio mix: 18.2%
Standard: Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS)

This project bundles four small run-of-river hydro power stations in Sichuan Province, western China. The project displaces electricity generated by fossil-fuel power plants and will generate emission reductions of an estimated 360,000 tCO2 equivalent between 2006 and 2012, verified and certified to the Voluntary Carbon Standard.

The project is located in southern Sichuan Province, a remote and mountainous region of China with much untapped potential for hydro power projects. The four run-of-river power plants have a total capacity of 17.15 MW. The clean electricity delivered to the local grid displaces electricity that would otherwise have been generated by fossil-fuel power stations. The project brings benefits besides that of climate change mitigation. Most of China's electricity demand is met by coal-fired power stations and these create local atmospheric pollution and issues with the disposal of ash. The construction and ongoing operation of the four hydro power plants creates jobs and contributes to the local economy through the improvement of local infrastructure. The projects also help address the shortfall of electricity available on the regional grid, with benefits to local households and economic development of businesses as well as providing energy security to the general community. Renewable energy projects are rarely the least cost option for electricity provision. However, through the sale of carbon credits such projects can start to pay for themselves and this is where funds generated by The CarbonNeutral Company's climate change programmes play their part.

Callahuanca Hydro Efficiency Project - Peru
Portfolio mix: 9%
Standard: VER+ Standard

This project improves the operating efficiency of a hydro power plant in the Huarochirí Province of western Peru. The project displaces electricity mainly generated by fossil-fuel power plants and will generate emission reductions of 20,000 tCO2 equivalent in 2007, verified and certified to the VER+ Standard.

The project is located alongside the Santa Eulalia River in the western foothills of the Peruvian Andes. The installation of new turbines and generators at the Callahuanca plant will increase capacity by 7.5 MW and so maximize productivity using the current available water flow. The additional clean electricity that is generated displaces electricity from Peru's National Electricity Grid that would otherwise have been produced by fossil-fuel power stations.

In addition to the development of renewable energy capacity, the project will improve the reliability of regional electricity supply which will benefit the running of key public services such as health clinics and schools. The installation of the new equipment and on-going operation of the plant will also provide jobs in this relatively undeveloped district of Peru. Moreover, the subsequent successful registration of the project with the Clean Development Mechanism has enabled a tree and shrub planting scheme to proceed, transforming uncultivated land and generating income for local communities.

Resource Protection Projects
Quzhai Waste Heat Recovery Project - China
Portfolio mix: 27.3%
Standard: Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS)

This project captures and utilises waste heat at a cement production facility. The project will generate emission reductions of an estimated 50,000 tCO2 equivalent between 2006 and 2008, verified and certified to the Voluntary Carbon Standard.

This project involves the construction of a waste heat recovery power plant at a cement production facility in the northern Chinese province of Hebei. Cement production is a highly polluting process, and over recent years China's production capacity has grown considerably. As with many industrial processes, cement production creates a considerable amount of waste heat which is usually vented into the atmosphere. Up to 35% of the heat used within this particular facility is wasted. The new equipment will increase the efficiency of the facility by utilising the waste heat to generate electricity for use on-site. The activity will displace electricity generated by fossil fuel power stations, which mainly run on coal in China.

Additional benefits include a dramatic reduction in heat pollution within the facility and reduction in local air pollution. It is not common practice in the Chinese cement industry to install such technology, and this is the first example within Hebei province. Carbon credits have allowed the project to become financially viable and this is where funds generated by climate change programmes organised by The CarbonNeutral Company play their critical part in developing capacity in developing regions of China.

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