Carbon calculator wins prize

Gets 2017 UNWTO Award for Innovation in Research and Technology

CARMACAL has just won the UNWTO innovation award at Fitur Madrid.           

CARMACAL is an application which allows tour operators and other businesses to measure the detailed carbon footprint of their tour packages, enabling the integration of carbon management into their daily operations.

Current calculators do not meet tour operators’ needs says Carmacal, as they mostly do not offer more than one emission factor for accommodations, have only general emission factors for transport modes, and are frequently centered on one element of tourism: either air transport or accommodation.

With CARMACAL, tour operators are now able to measure and manage every carbon footprint aspect of their products in detail.

The carbon footprint of flights is specified up to the level of airline and type of plane, for all scheduled flights available. CARMACAL differentiates the footprint for 25 modes of transport, 21 emission-intensive activities, and gives exact distance calculations.

Accommodation carbon footprints are calculated on an individual basis for some 550,000 accommodations worldwide. For other accommodations, 20 different types with individual emission factors are available.

CARMACAL is a web-based application with a simple overview screen, enabling product selection by for instance unique codes, product names, countries and product types. The first, overview screen is used for origin-destination transport and, if applicable, for an accommodation that is used during the whole trip.     

Transport can be split in origin-destination and local transport, for better insight, and as many transport segments as needed can be added.

Local transport, individual accommodations, and activities can also be specified on a per-day basis. Accommodations that are not among the 550,000 available can be specified with a drop-down list of types.

Locations for transport start and ending points, as well as for accommodation, can also be found via a GoogleMaps pop-up.

Finally, CARMACAL offers three different carbon overviews: two for individual products, of which one on a per-day basis (showing you exactly which components weigh heavy on the total footprint and when), and one to compare different products (for example to the same destination).

Watch this YouTube CARMACAL tutorial to see how the carbon emissions of a tour are calculated. HERE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RSTbFJjGVYI&feature=youtu.be

Valere Tjolle