CO2 Compensation for conference participation
A meeting like the 7th Chile-Cologne-Bonn-Symposium has a significant climate impact that we should minimize. The main contribution to the global heating are the flights to the conference site but accommodation and the conference setup also contribute to a smaller degree.
We encourage everybody to compensate for the personal climate impact by financing measures for CO2-offsetting. A project for CO2-compensation is provided in Chile by Fundación Reforestemos that mainly restores forests in Chile providing local development opportunities simultaneously with the CO2 storing in trees.
For participants who want to support this activity as a compensation for their CO2 emission, we collect the corresponding donations through the conference registration page.
To give some guidance on the appropriate amount we provide a table below, that gives the average compensation appropriate, depending on the region on Earth from where you travel from. The numbers are based on Didier Barret's travel footprint calculator, assuming a non-CO2-overhead factor of 2.3 for flights (mainly contrails), six nights stay in Puerto Varas, 25kg CO2e/participant for the conference facility, and a typical current compensation effort of 23€/ton CO2e.
This results in the following approximate numbers that you should consider for compensation:
Origin: EUR US-$ CLP compensates for kg CO2e ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Chile 15 17 14000 600 Mexico 65 72 61000 2900 USA 90 99 84000 3900 Canada, Australia 100 110 94000 4300 Europe 120 132 113000 5300 India 150 165 141000 6600 Japan, Taiwan 165 182 155000 7200
Instead of compensating through Reforestemos you are of course free to compensate through any other project that you may find more interesting or convincing. In this case the numbers may serve as a rough guideline.
In order to obtain a rough overview and to have some statistics for the conference, we would be grateful if you can inform us if you have chosen an alternative compensation; also, please let us know the amount.