So first things first. If our household is going to go carbon neutral, we need to know where we’re starting from. Just how big is our carbon footprint, and how hard will we have to work to whittle it down to zero? More importantly, how much damage is it going to inflict on the bank account to get there?

Deceptively simple questions, it turns out, because a spade isn’t a spade in the carbon accounting world. I tried a few carbon calculators online, with widely divergent results.

It’s possible that each year I generate 4.8 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions – that is, carbon dioxide plus other greenhouse gases such as methane – but maybe it’s actually more like 17 tonnes… Hey, what’s 12 tonnes between friends?

Here are the two that at least agreed broadly on the numbers:

carbon neutral is an Australian site which puts my personal total CO2-equivalent emissions at 7.91 tonnes, and offers to offset my emissions by planting 47 trees, at a total cost of A$158.

carbon footprint is an international site with the option to pick your country, and gives a similar answer:  7.78 tonnes, with a range of offset options from A$103 for 8 trees in Kenya, to A$213 for sustainable development projects, like hydro and wind power, in developing countries.

Waaaait a minute. Can that be right? For the grand sum of ~150 bucks, I can stop imagining a future of squirm-worthy conversations with my little girl? Sign me up!

Great carbon calculator here

http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/

Click here an exhaustive article comparing 10 carbon calculators.

Whatever the reasons you have for cutting your energy consumption (increasingly high prices or environmnetal philosophy), there are four actions you can take to start:

1. Calculate your family’s current CO2 output using one of the many handy-dandy CO2 calculators. The calculation will give you a benchmark.

2. Decrease your time in the car.

3. Do an energy audit then develop a plan to increase your home’s energy efficiency.

4. Look at switching to “green” electricity sources (in Ontario the only supplier of green electricity is Bullfrog Power).

A year ago we did something that most people might consider drastic: we moved. While we didn’t move only to cut our GHG output — it was certainly one of the primary reasons. After spending five years in the car driving my kids to three different schools, averaging 300 km a week, I’d had enough. Combine this with our oldest son graduating from his elementary school and not getting into his school of choice because he was out of district, it was enough for me to plunk the “For Sale” sign in the lawn.

We moved from our leafy, suburban-like neighbourhood to a midtown street with a serious lack of trees (something I aim to fix) last August. Our current house is a semi-detached new build, and despite the smaller space versus the last house, I’m happy here — besides, cleaning it is a lot easier. We are walking distance to great schools, the subway, fantastic shops and restaurants — gee, I sound like a real estate ad! The boys are independent and get around on their own — one takes the subway, the other his bike, and they both love their new-found freedom. Now that the boys take care of themselves and I walk my daughter to her school we’ve cut our driving from 300km to 100km a week. Considering the rising cost of gas in the last year, my timing was pretty good!

There’s another benefit to the move: all of our utility bills are less than half of the old house’. The new house is only 300 square feet smaller than the last one, but thanks to new construction, being semi-detached, something called insulation (which our old house didn’t have), and Energy Star appliances, our bills are all pleasant surprises when they arrive. The only bill which naturally hasn’t changed is our telecommunications bill. It’s sad when your phone and cable bill is more than double your heating bill.

While I’d love to put geo-thermal heating and cooling and a tankless hotwater system in that will have to be left for a future date.

I feel pretty good about where we stand right now — although I know we as a family could do even better at reducing our greenhouse gases. Now, however, I have to work on what we purchase from clothing, to electroincs to food — food being the primary one – as well as the most confusing. But more on that one later.

This morning, ClimateBiz reports on a recent survey by a Seattle P-I journalist on carbon calculators. The reporter tried out ten different calculators, and here are the results:

Not surprising. Last year, I did my own exploration of carbon calculators, and came out equally confused. TerraPass had made it into my list of Top 3 Calculators, along with ZeroFootprint and Nature. Now comes Cool Climate, the new calculator from UC Berkeley, that promises to be better than all its predecessors.

Not only is it hard to figure out which calculator to use, but there is also the accountability problem of carbon offsets, carbon calculators’ close cousins. When I am sitting at home in California, how can I know for sure, that the money I am giving will indeed result in carbon credits? The alleged 20% rate of doubtful credits, as reported by the U.N. Clean Development Mechanism organization, spells out caution.

Last, I have my own reservations about the behavioral consequences of relying too much on carbon offsets. I have said it before, we cannot buy our way out of our predicament. Conservation, efficiency, smarter technology solutions, should always come first, with carbon offsets as the absolute last resort. Recognizing that there are indeed circumstances when one has to fly, as an example, and carbon offsets do have a very legitimate role.

I wonder, what is your experience with carbon calculators? Do you buy carbon offsets? If so, when? How would you improve the current system?

Following last week’s adventures in carbon footprinting, I thought it might be good to run through the things that make the biggest difference.

There’s a lot of misinformation out there. Plastic bags, for example, keep coming up in the context of climate change. Plastic bags represent 1/5000th of an adult carbon footprint. They need to be banned, but not for the climate. Turning appliances off properly, unplugging chargers are good ideas, switching to low energy light bulbs, etc, are all good ideas. But I expect you already do those, if you’re here reading this. And I bet it hasn’t made a serious dent in your footprint. Take every recommended action at the end of Google’s carbon calculator, and it’ll knock less than half a tonne off your annual co2 – not insignificant, but nowhere near a sustainable level.

So if the top tips won’t save us, what will? Let’s look at the government statistics on household co2. Here’s the pdf. The carbon calculators all deal with individual co2, but the best figures I’ve found relate to households, and the subject is better tackled by household anyway. Depending on your age, this is where your greenhouse gas emissions come from:

Food
The first thing you might notice is that the largest factor here is food, drink and tobacco. Which is interesting, because in the 8 calculators I compared, only one mentioned food in any detail.

The biggest contributor to this figure is meat. I’ve said it plenty of times, but it’s one of the biggest oversights in the climate change debate – lifestock is responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions than the entire global transport network. These are methane emissions, which perhaps explains why they don’t get counted, but methane is worse than co2 for global warming. All told, lifestock accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions.

Beef if the big one. One kilo of beef is as damaging to the environment as driving your car for 160 miles. So, if you’re seriously looking at bringing your footprint down to size, meat is one thing that really makes a difference. As with all these things, you don’t have to stop altogether. Just eat less meat. Make beef the luxury it always has been. Save it for special occasions, and when you do eat beef, eat grass-fed, free range beef. It’s better for animal welfare, but also has lower emissions. The stuff to cut out is the cheap beef, the McDonalds or the ready-meal lasagnas, where the meat has no real taste anyway.

Veggies don’t get away scot free here either, because there are plenty of emissions around vegetables. Because supermarkets operate on a ‘uni-seasonal’ basis, fruit and vegetables are available all year round, and have to be shipped or flown in. We’ve talked about air miles elsewhere, so I won’t labour the point here. If you want to tackle this one, look at eating more seasonal food. I set myself the challenge to do just that this year, and it’s been no challenge at all. Here’s what’s in season right now, by the way.

Lastly, the emissions from food and drink go up with the distance it has travelled, but also with the amount of processing involved. Processed food, of any kind, always has higher emissions than fresh food. That will include shipping to sorting houses, factories, and packing plants. It’ll involve the energy to run machines, the emissions of all the ingredients travelling from elsewhere before they’re combined. Eating for the planet means eating fresh food. And that’s no hardship, since it’s tastier and better for you anyway.

Household energy
At the bottom of the graph above you’ll see energy use, both direct and indirect. Direct energy is what you’re using in your home. Indirect energy is that which goes towards generating the power you use. Power stations are notoriously inefficient. Some 60% of the fuel that goes into a power station is wasted in heat. This is because heat doesn’t travel well, and nobody wants a power station in their back garden. The stations are too far away from the homes where the electricity is used, so the heat is just vented into the atmosphere rather than put to use generating further power, or heating homes.

Your direct household energy use is easier to bring under control. The most important thing here is not light bulbs, it’s insulation. A third of the energy spent on heating is lost through the walls and roof. Loft and cavity wall insulation make a big difference, and can knock hundreds of pounds off your bills as well as your footprint. It makes no sense not to insulate your home properly, but still, 40% of homes have no loft insulation. Half of those who haven’t done it are put off by the cost, seeing the outlay rather than the eventual savings, despite the fact that it would pay for itself in less than five years. Worse yet, 60% of people who haven’t done their lofts say they haven’t because they can’t face the accumulation of junk that’s up there. Like eating fresh, seasonal food, household energy is one of those things with obvious benefits beyond co2, and we should pay more attention to it.

One other thing I’ll mention here – smart meters. The government is making meters that show real-time power use a big part of their plans for reducing household emissions. The idea is simple – a smart meter displays real time energy use, so you can switch on the kettle and see exactly what it costs you. You can switch everything off and see how much power is still being used. Using a smart meter can knock 10-15% off your electricity bills almost instantly, but a survey last November showed that only one in five people had even heard of smart meters.

Consumption
Consult that bar graph at the top again and consider the impact of your shopping. We all know we’re supposed to be using our cars less and riding bikes and so on, but ‘leisure goods and services’ account for more co2 here than private transport. Add on clothing and footwear, and household and personal goods, and you’ve got 25-30% of our emissions from consumption. None of the 8 carbon calculators I tested factored this in.

Most of the emissions from consumption are indirect, but we’re still responsible for them. If I buy a new t-shirt off the high street, I am adding a long chain of emissions to my account, from the farm machinery where the cotton was grown, to the plant where the cotton was processed, the sweatshop where the shirt was sewn, the trucks and ships that brought my shirt from China, through to the shop where the shirt was displayed and bought and driven home. We underestimate the emissions behind our consumer choices. 36% of global emissions are from the manufacturing industry.

Other things included in this leisure services category would include books, newspapers, watching TV, going to the theatre, enjoying sport. To reduce emissions here we can enjoy things that are free, participating in local sport, enjoying the outdoors. We can play games and enjoy good old fashioned conversation.

Household and personal goods includes pharmaceuticals, cleaning products, and appliances. If we want to reduce our footprint in this area, we need to do things like buy secondhand, fix things when they break rather than replace them, share things rather than always having our own, buy less and buy better quality.

Conclusion
So, there are three things that will make a big difference to your carbon footprint. Yes, stop flying. By all means take up cycling, change your lightbulbs and wear a sweater. But first, cut down your meat eating, insulate your home, and just all round buy less stuff.

I don’t know why this kind of detail is unavailable on carbon footprints. Here’s one other one I found, a slightly different breakdown from the Independent. If you know of others that actually include the important things, let me know, and perhaps we can set some priorities straight along the way.

Today marks the first day of the first phase in my Carbon Conscious Project. Every day of this week, I will record all of my direct carbon producing activities. The following week, I will look at the data, and try to quantify it with all the tools currently at my disposal. The rest will depend on what I find.

As I am gearing up for the Carbon Conscious Project, I have had the opportunity to test a number of carbon calculators. Some are easier than others to use. They all have their advantages and disadvantages, and could all use some improvements. Here are my top 3 favorites:

1. Terrapass : I like that it is very easy to use, allows be to input detailed flight routes, and provides for immediate remedial action in the form of purchase of Terrapass carbon offsets for each category, car, flights, and home. I don’t like that it is not clear whether the data is individual or household, and that it does not include other categories such as water usage, food, recycling, etc.
2. Zero Footprint : I like that it is the most detailed of all calculators, it really gets down to great level of details. There is an option to buy carbon offsets. There is also a community aspect to their site that gives more relevance to the calculator. I will be curious to see how their citywide initiative with the city of Toronto pans out. I did not like that they don’t allow for the input of exact flight mileage, like Terrapass. Also I was not sure if they meant round trips or one way.
3. Nature: I like that it sticks to basics and is fast and easy to do. They also include food and recycling, and car use data such as air filter and tire maintenance, in their calculation. I do not like that the calculations are very rough, eg, home footprint is based on size of house to 5 bedroom +, and does not take into account actual energy consumption. Also, the flying part is not done according actual mileage.

All three calculators agreed that my footprint is way above US average. Big culprits: all my trips to Hawaii and France, still driving too much, our big house, and the pool. Terrapass provides immediate opportunities to redeem myself with its various offset passes. It will cost me $170 for one year. This is not taking into account, all my trips to Target. None of the calculators include the impact of non food purchases.

Darmok, thanks for pointing me to the Nobel Prize website. There, I found a real gem.  A transcript of the telephone interview of Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), following the announcement of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, 12 October 2007. The interviewer was Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org. Here is the part that caught my attention:

(AS) – If individuals were to ask you what they should do to help . . .

(RP) – Yes, yes. (I can so well see it, the Indian head shake . . . Prad being from India, this is an ongoing joke between us, Yes, yes, I am telling you . . .)

(AS) – . . . What would your message be to them? 

(RP) – Well I would say two things. Firstly I think we should ponder and consider, ponder over and consider, the carbon footprint that each of our actions is producing. And I think if we create a consciousness that this world has to move towards a low carbon future, then I think it would certainly set us in a somewhat different direction from what we’ve been following. And secondly I think there is need for major behavioural changes, and changes in lifestyles, and I think if the public puts adequate pressure on governments then governments will frame policies, including putting a price on carbon, that will provide the right signals to the market as well for developing new technologies and being able to disseminate them on a large scale.

So, you mean I am not crazy.  We need to figure out a better, more user friendly system of measuring the impact of each one of our daily actions. Carbon calculators don’t work because they are too rough in the way they operate. The measurements need to get down to the minute level of each ones of our actions, so that we become conscious on a much more refined level. This is an idea that has been dancing in my head for some time now, and Rajendra Pachauri’s words are just what I needed to get going with this project. I want to itemize all the actions that make my days, and start calculating the carbon impact for each one. I will spend the next few days getting set up, and, just to make it clean, I will start next Monday. I will call it the Carbon Conscious Project. I will make it the focus of this blog for the next weeks to come, and see where that takes me.