COP23 Special: A Guide to "Low-Carbon Transport" in Germany

Due to the continuously growing issue of air pollution, how toexecute the reduction of mobile- source pollution from various vehicles has become an ongoing topic. In the end of 2017, I traveled with my coworkers of Delta Electronics Foundation to Bonn, Germany, to attend COP23 (the 23rd Conference of the
Parties of 2017 United Nations Climate Change Conference). During our daily trip between our accommodation in Cologne and the UN conference, we experienced many wonders of the local public transportation system, and learned a little about how Germany reduced its "carbon footprint" in transport.

One sticker, free public transportationAs COP23 is an environmental conservation conference known for its fight against climate change, and the host organization has made a lot of effort to reduce the carbon footprint produced by nearly 20,000 participants from all around the world. The conference was held in Bonn, located in West Germany close to the Netherlands and Belgium. In order to encourage participants to use public transport, the local
government of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia provided each of them a free ticket, which is called the VRS ticket.

Public bicycles in Bonn, free to use with a downloaded app

Germany deployed many electric and hybrid buses from other cities to support the low-carbon transportation during COP23

The ticket is actually just a small sticker on the back of the conference name tag. But with this tiny label, during the two-week conference, you can take any public transportation for free between Bonn and Cologne: a bus, a regional train (similar to an EMU), the subway (MRT), or a streetcar (light rail). You can even use the regional public bicycles for free by simply downloading a specific app. Anyone who has
traveled in Europe knows that the transportation cost in Germany is rather high. Hence, if you use the VRS ticket every day for 2 weeks, you will save a lot.

In addition to the regional public transportation mentioned above, the German government also deployed many electric and hybrid buses from nearby cities as clean shuttles exclusively for COP23 to cover some fixed routes, such as from the train station to the city center and conference venue.

In comparison with the New Taipei City’s electric bus 710 I have taken, the interior of the COP23’s clean shuttle looks similar, except that it does not have two huge battery poles as 710 does. I wonder if the huge batteries are hidden under the bus or made much smaller because the technology in Germany is more advanced.

Drive less, get a cheap early-bird ticket for more than 70% offAfter the conference ended, I was setting off on the last long-distance journey from Cologne to Frankfurt airport. There are two ways to get to the airport, either by taking a long-distance bus, or a train. I chose the latter, which is faster, and there are some tips that I would like to share.

Generally, the InterCityExpress (ICE) tickets sold by the German railway company Deutsche Bahn AG (DB) are all very expensive. A ticket purchased at the station on the day of departure can cost over 70 euros (more than NT $2,500). However, if you purchase a ticket as early as possible, you might have a chance to get it at the cheapest price of 19.9 euros (about NT $720)! Yes, that's right, less than 30% of the original price. This particular measure was meant to encourage passengers to plan their trips early on, and reduce long-distance driving. It saves time and money, and help with carbon reduction for our planet.

One thing to keep in mind is that in Germany, train tickets are sold as the transport ticket (with the right to board only) and the seated tickets, and the train carriages have different classes (such as first class or second class). All the initial purchases are tickets of "unseated" prices. A seated ticket costs extra 3 euros (about NT $108). Those who are worried about purchasing wrong tickets should avoid the automatic ticket selling machine, and go to the counter where there are clerks to assist you.

Pay a little more for the earth to offset the carbon footprint of transportationOne thing interesting is that when purchasing a long-distance train ticket on the automatic selling machine, an option of Umwelt-Plus (Environment-Plus) will pop up, stating that by spending an extra euro, you can help DB to use 100% renewable energy. It is similar to "Carbon Neutral", a measure adopted by some budge airlines I have seen before. The idea is that about 700 kg of carbon dioxide will be produced from the flight, and passengers can pay extra NT $200 to help the airline to plant trees,offsetting the emissions.

The option of paying 1 extra euro for "carbon neutrality" on the screen of the DB’s automatic ticket selling machine

This made me quite curious about how many people are willing to pay more to offset their transport carbon footprint? Therefore, I set up a survey on the Facebook page of low-carbon fans, asking how many of them would pay more for carbon neutrality. Surprisingly, over half (55%) of the responders said yes.

Of course there were many opponents as well. Some people thought that they simply did not want to pay more (to save money), some criticized DB for frequent delays (complaining their service quality), and some answered that they required a full disclosure of the corporation's carbon information before making the contribution (worrying about being deceived).

Budget airlines also have measures for offsetting carbon emissions

During my trip on ICE for over an hour, I found a current issue of DB’s magazine. It has a special report for climate, particularly created for COP23. In addition to various environmental advertisement, DB also designed a folded page called "This is green" to reflect on their 112 green action projects carried out over the past 100 years, including carbon neutrality project, concept of power-saving driving, mobile tickets (paper-less tickets), electricity regeneration by brakes, ridesharing promotion, eco-stations, eco-conservation, and green electricity. If the transport industry of our country would like to promote green transportation, they certainly can learn a lot from DB.