Retrospective 2019 CO2 Audit¶

In Summary: I consumed 4.613 tonnes of CO2 which is the target amount for 2020; and, I think I need to set my 2020 target to 3.5 tonnes.

Climate Change Audits

Simon Harper

14 Jan 2020

5 min read

So let’s summarise 2019 and plan for 2020…

I have zero production costs for Housing (over 50 years old), Car (over 11 years old), Cycle (over 10 years old). Further, as part of this focus we have changed our energy supplier to ‘Bulb’ energy:

‘Bulb is the UK’s biggest green energy supplier. We provide all our members with 100% renewable electricity. For every unit you use, we make sure a unit is produced and put on the grid by a renewable source including solar, wind and hydro. Plus, our gas is 100% carbon neutral. 10% is green gas produced from renewable sources like food or farm waste. And we offset the rest of the gas we supply by supporting carbon reduction projects around the world.’

And so we have no CO2 footprint for energy in the house.

Water also has a cost of about 0.79 gCO2/litre I’ve no clue how much we’ve used this year as we don’t have a metre. But the average water usage for a standard household in the UK is about 164 m3 per year. Giving 164000 litres at 0.79 gCO2/litre = 129560 grams for 164000 litres or 0.12956 tonnes.

So on this basis for 2019

Type	Sub-Type	CO2 (tonnes)	Notes
Energy		0.000	100% Renewables
Water		0.120	UK average consumption
Food		1.700	Vegetarian Diet, including 33% Food Waste
Travel	Car	1.670	Astra 1.8 Design 22/10/2018 86,367miles 04/12/2019 91,695 miles = 5328
	Public	0.000	No Usage - Cycle or Run
	Air	0.540 2.820	2 trips to Spain (holidays) with RyanAir at 3600km return at 75g per km = 540kg (0.540) tonnes. 3 work trips 1 to San Francisco (16760 km return - 1.33t) 1 to Pittsburg (11560 km return - 0.92t), and 1 to Cyprus (6840km return - 0.57t). All according to https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?tab=3 which does not take account of the airline efficiency. Work Trips offset.
Clothes		0.140	I’ve no clue, but I have limited clothes (my wife would say very limited) so let’s take the UK average of 140kg pa.
Eating and Drinking Out		0.000	Included in ‘Food’ above
Home & Furniture		0.000	No clue for this year (I didn’t keep a record)
Online Life		0.000	No clue for this year (I didn’t keep a record)
Electronics		0.043	Small electronic purchases value £100 this year at the 0.43kg per GBP (43 kg).
Misc		0.000
TOTAL		7.033 4.213	Total Carbon Personal Carbon
+10%		0.400	10% of running total to account for errors in estimations of my personal use.
PERSONAL TOTAL		4.613

The Plan for 2020¶

So this means that my 2019 consumption is 4.613 tonnes of CO2. The current amount a UK citizen consumes is 6 tonnes per year with a world average of 4 tonnes per year; there are big error bars on this as the variance runs from 2 tonnes to 15 tonnes. You can see the history laid bare by country at wikipedia. Now we can also see the personal targets we should be aiming for and that I need to be at 3.3 tonnes by 2030 and 2.3 by 2040. So the first target is lose 1.3 tonnes in 10 years but let’s try to get to this faster. For 2020 I’m going to try and do this by reducing my car travel (by half) and my food waste (to 25%).

Important

A Return Trip to Spain Just as a comparison I thought I’d look at longer journeys, in this case to the south of Spain.

By Air is 3600km return, costs 270kg of Carbon, costs ~£50 and takes 3 hours.

By Car is 5200 km return (Google maps), costs 1.2 tonnes of Carbon, costs lots, and takes around 23 hours.

By Train is 5200km return, costs ~210kg of Carbon (carbonfootprint.com), costs £250-£400 return (raileurope.com), and takes 47 hours and 4 changes.

Note

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