On Estimating Transportation Energy Consumption and Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Off-shore Island Tourism—A Case Study of Haikou City,China

In the tourism industry, transportation is the greatest consumer of energy and contributes the largest amount of CO₂ emissions (ECCE). Airplane flights make up between 60% and 70% of all forms of tourism transport. Since airplane travel is the main way for tourists to access islands, airplane travel receives considerable attention in the study of the relationship between island tourism transportation, environment and economy. However, the parameters adopted to estimate ECCE in the literature are usually either out-of-date or taken from papers not written in China. To improve the accuracy of estimates, all the parameters used in this paper are current and were obtained locally. Based on these parameters and a bottom-up approach, a more accurate estimation of ECCE for the off-shore island city of Haikou was obtained in 2012. The results indicate that 24.30% of the city’s energy consumption, 33.89 PJ, was due to tourism transportation, while CO₂ emissions were 2.54 Mt. It is incorrect to assume that tourism is “an industry with no pollution”. In Haikou, for example, tourism turns out to be the major form of energy consumption in the city. This paper makes several suggestions intended to minimize the negative environmental impact from tourism transportation. These include recommending longer stays, a decrease in the number of flights, taxation of airplane emissions, and the setting up an environmental recovery fund.