Carbon Care
Organizing international conferences such as the IEEE-VPPC leads to significant amounts of emitted greenhouse gases (GHG’s). This is mainly due to the transport of the attendees to the conference venue but also local emissions due to the running of the conference, including accommodation, meals and conference center energy utilization.
IEEE VPPC 2014 was organized in a carbon care philosophy. It was tried to reduce the conference ecological footprint and actions were taken to reduce and to compensate the conference GHG emissions as well as to raise public awareness. The CO2 emissions associated with the travel of attendees were compensated by funding carbon reduction projects, with a local part and an international part.
The amount of CO2 equivalent estimated for the local organization of IEEE-VPPC 2014 was calculated and the plantation of new trees in Parque Verde-Coimbra took place in June, 3, 2015 as a local mitigation action.
The international transport accounts for the vast majority of emitted greenhouse gases. For IEEE-VPPC2014, the CO2 equivalent resulting from international transport was also estimated and it was chosen to participate in the reforestation of the Los Alerces National Park in southern Argentina as the international part of the project.
Source/Mitigation |
Estismated CO2 equivalent |
Uncertainty |
Compensation |
Local/Coimbra |
17.3 ton |
53% |
26.5 ton |
Intern. Transport / Argentina |
287 ton |
60% |
459 ton |
TOTAL |
304 ton |
- |
486 ton |
Local mittigation project - Parque Verde, Coimbra, Portugal
 |
 |
 |
VPPC2014 and Municipality of Coimbra staff action on 3 June 2015
International mittigation project - Los Alerces National Park, Argentina
 |
 |
 |
Villa Futalaufquen primary school students and National Park staff at nursery (left) Students with EPE’13, VPPC 2014 and VPPC’10 T-shirts (center) and the new nursery from VPPC2014 (right)
For further information see :
T. Jokela, V. Cattiau, P. Tavares, L. Chevallier, A. Bouscayrol, P. Pereirinha, L. Silva, J. Trovao, “Carbon care action of IEEE-VPPC’14”, 11th IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference, VPPC 2015, Montreal, Canada. DOI: not yet available. To appear at IEEE Xplorer
Examples of previous Conference’s Carbon Care actions:
EPE'13 ECCE Europe, 15th European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications, www.epe2013.com/index.php?page=local-mitigation
2010 IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference, VPPC 2010, http://vppc2010.univ-lille1.fr/index.php?page=carbon-care
