328The Spring Festival travel rush, hailed as the largest annual human migration in history, not only carries the deep longing of hundreds of millions of Chinese people for home but also reflects the vitality and pulse of China's economic and social development. Trains, cars, airplanes... all kinds of transportation shuttle incessantly, delivering thoughts and hopes to every corner.
In this collective memory, we pay close attention to how many people are on the move but haven't calculated the 🧾carbon bill that comes along with this population migration.
This year's Spring Festival travel rush started on January 14th and will end on February 22nd, lasting a total of 40 days. According to estimates by the Ministry of Transport and other departments, the cross-regional personnel flow during the 2025 Spring Festival travel rush is expected to reach 9 billion trips. From the perspective of travel structure, self-driving accounts for 80%, expected to reach 7.2 billion trips, while railway and civil aviation passenger traffic will exceed 510 million and 90 million trips respectively.
With such a massive number, how do we calculate the carbon emissions from this Spring Festival travel rush?
Waaaaaaait......Let me, an editor working in Beijing, calculate my own journey home first. ✍️
According to the approach provided by Carbon AI, I first determined the different modes of transportation and distances for my three segments of the journey home:
- Subway🚇 From my rental in Beijing➡️Beijing South Station 🚇 12km
- High-speed train🚄 From Beijing South Station➡️Hangzhou East Station 🚄1247.6km
- Car🚗 From Hangzhou East Station➡️My hometown 🚗2.6km
To ensure the accuracy of the data, I queried the emission factors for these three modes of transportation in Carbonstop's authoritative carbon emission factor database, CCDB. Based on the formula carbon emissions = activity quantity x carbon emission factor, I calculated that my trip home alone generated 27.3kgCO2e of carbon emissions just in terms of transportation.
"This is equivalent to carrying an iPhone 14 with infinite battery life to a deserted island and using it continuously for 7 years and 6 months."
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And this is just part of the Spring Festival travel data for an ordinary person traveling from Beijing to Zhejiang.
If we extend this one person's Spring Festival travel to a company, a district, a province, or even the entire country, then the movement of an estimated 9 billion trips in 2025 would result in what kind of number?
With this curiosity, Carbonstop calculated the carbon emissions of the 2025 Spring Festival travel rush.
We obtained the required data from the Ministry of Transport, China Railway Bureau, various transportation apps, CCTV.com, Xinhua News Agency, and series reports on Spring Festival passenger flow trends, estimating the expected number of trips and average travel distance for each mode of transportation in 2025.
The calculation shows that the 2025 Spring Festival travel rush is expected to produce 251 million tons of CO2e in carbon emissions!
(Note: Due to insufficient existing data for the 2025 Spring Festival travel rush, we estimated missing data based on previous years' Spring Festival statistics.)
The shock of the numbers cannot change our mood and way of returning home, but it can make us rethink the relationship between humans and nature. Without compromising the quality of life, when we have the choice, let these concrete figures become the driving force for our actions...
For example,
- "Low-carbon" festivals: Do not set off fireworks to reduce environmental pollution
- "Green" travel: When preparing for Spring Festival travel, prioritize electric vehicles; when visiting relatives and friends, choose walking, cycling, or public transportation more often
- "Simple" gift-giving: When purchasing goods, choose low-carbon New Year's goods with no packaging or simple packaging
- "Moderate" dining: When entertaining relatives and friends, order reasonably, avoid food waste, and practice the "Clean Plate Campaign"
The bell of the Spring Festival is approaching, and are you already eagerly setting out on your journey home? Carbonstop sincerely wishes everyone a prosperous and thriving new Year of the Snake!
