Energy Consumption and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Resulting From Tourism Travel in an Alpine Setting

• Main Authors: Rainer Unger, Bruno Abegg, Markus Mailer, Paul Stampfl
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: International Mountain Society 2016-11-01
• Series: Mountain Research and Development
• Subjects: tourism transport; energy; greenhouse gas emissions; climate change; GIS-based carbon impact appraisal; Austria
• Online Access: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-16-00058.1
• ISSN: 0276-4741; 1994-7151

Tourism—with its social, economic, and ecological dimensions—can be an important driver of sustainable development of alpine communities. Tourism is essential for local people's incomes and livelihoods, but it can also have a major impact on the local environment, landscape aesthetics, and (mainly through tourist transport) global climate change. A project currently underway is developing the Austrian mountain municipality of Alpbach into a role model for competitive and sustainable year-round alpine tourism using an integrated and spatially explicit approach that considers energy demand and supply related to housing, infrastructure, and traffic in the settlement and the skiing area. As the first outcome of the project, this article focuses on the development of the Model of Alpine Tourism and Transportation, a geographic information system–based tool for calculating, in detail, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions resulting from travel to a single alpine holiday destination. Analysis results show that it is crucial to incorporate both direct and indirect energy use and emissions as each contributes significantly to the climate impact of travel. The study fills a research gap in carbon impact appraisal studies of tourism transport in the context of alpine tourism at the destination level. Our findings will serve as a baseline for the development of comprehensive policies and agendas promoting the transformation toward sustainable alpine tourism.