An En­vir­on­ment­ally Friendly Jour­ney with the Trans-Siberi­an Rail­way

 

 

Find the latest news about the jour­ney with the Trans-Siberi­an rail­way on our Blog - On the Train to Gaobeidi­an.

There are two ways for European par­ti­cipants to travel to the con­fer­en­ce: by train or plane. The ques­tion arises as to wheth­er the emis­sions re­lated to such trips, in­clud­ing con­fer­en­ces in­ten­ded to fur­ther cli­mate pro­tec­tion meas­ures, can ever be made up for. We are there­fore on the safe side, when we choose to travel as low-emis­sion as pos­sible.

Every year, the av­er­age per­son is ex­pec­ted to con­sume ap­prox­im­ately 17,000 kWh and cre­ate max. 1 tonne CO2 re­lated to en­ergy for food, hous­ing, mo­bil­ity, con­sump­tion and in­fra­struc­ture. Of that 28% for hous­ing and 25% for mo­bil­ity. 4 tonnes of CO2 emis­sions are the res­ult of a round trip flight between Zurich and Pek­ing. That’s the mo­bil­ity budget for a 16 year peri­od! A more cli­mate-friendly al­tern­at­ive is to travel by train, which gen­er­ates only 1 tonne of CO2.

A group from Europe (ap­prox. 12 par­ti­cipants) will travel by these means to the Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce in Gaobeidi­an. The aim is to de­mon­strate how one might travel in a more en­vir­on­ment­ally-friendly way, by choos­ing to slow down and travel by train.

The back­ground of the train jour­ney is to show that one can travel re­l­at­ively cli­mate friendly from Europe to the Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce in Gaobeidi­an. The jour­ney time of about 18 days by train can be used to re­flect on mu­tu­al pro­fes­sion­al con­tents, to dis­cuss cli­mate pro­tec­tion as well as ap­proaches to so­cial and per­son­al changes in be­ha­viour, and to de­vel­op new per­spect­ives.

The trip be­gins in Septem­ber 2019 in Ber­lin (the new dates will be com­mu­nic­ated as soon as pos­sible) and will con­clude in a timely man­ner, ar­riv­ing in Gaobeidi­an for the Pass­ive House Con­fer­en­ce. After the con­fer­en­ce there will be ap­prox. some days in Gaobei­bi­an and oth­er des­tin­a­tions in China. On the way there will be stop­overs in Mo­scow, Irkutsk and Lake Baikal, and on the re­turn jour­ney, there will be stop­overs in Nov­os­ibirsk and again Mo­scow. We then reach Ber­lin in Oc­to­ber 2019.

Baikal

Pre­lim­in­ary Travel Dates

to fol­low soon

 

Out­ward jour­ney: Septem­ber from Ber­lin

Re­turn jour­ney: Oc­to­ber from Pek­ing, ar­rival in Oc­to­ber in Ber­lin

Ac­com­mod­a­tion & Costs

The jour­ney with Trans-Siberi­an rail­way will take place in simple cars, likely without a shower. The group of planned 12 people will travel in 4 per­son sleep­er com­part­ments. The food in the din­ing car is rather me­dio­cre, so some self-sup­ply at the sta­tions is re­com­men­ded.

For budget reas­ons, the hotel ac­com­mod­a­tion at the stop­overs is aimed at be­ing low-cost.
The total costs are not ex­pec­ted to ex­ceed €5000.

For li­ab­il­ity reas­ons, the par­ti­cipants of this group are re­spons­ible for them­selves, thus this is not an of­fi­cial group trip.

Con­tact

In­ter­es­ted parties can con­tact the trip’s or­gan­izer, Paul Si­mons, per Email: Si­mons@Blower­Door.de
The Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te ap­proves of this type of travel and has there­fore chosen to pub­lish this in­form­a­tion. However, the Pass­ive House In­sti­tu­te is not re­spons­ible for the or­gan­isa­tion, the ex­e­cu­tion, and re­lated po­ten­tial risks of this jour­ney. Each par­ti­cipant is re­spons­ible for their own jour­ney. Ques­tions re­gard­ing the trip should be dir­ec­ted ex­clus­ively to Paul Si­mons: Si­mons@Blower­Door.de