I’ve just updated my carbon footprint calculation using WWF Footprint calculator. It comes out at 3.8 tonnes CO2 annually which is less than the answer I got in 2016 though that was using a different calculator. I think the main difference will be not having had any flights in the last year. We now drive an electric car and, even though we didn’t run a car in 2016, we did rent petrol driven cars for a few weeks in the year. So that will make a difference too.
I’m surprised that the house is so low. It is for the past year and we haven’t bought any appliances. We have all the insulation that’s going, solar panels on the roof, and use green electricity and gas.
Interesting that the government uses almost as much gCO2 on my behalf as I do personally!
Two years ago, I used Carbon Footprint to calculate our house carbon footprint and it came out at 4.12 metric tonnes CO2e. That’s per person, there are two of us in a five apartment semi-detached house. This is half the UK average and just a bit above the world average of 4 tonnes. But still twice the target of 2 tonnes needed to combat climate change. Here the result:
Things that help with this score:
- Not running a car. We live in Glasgow city where it’s kind of daft to drive into the city centre where the parking is expensive and when there is such good public transport. Having a senior citizens’ free bus pass is another reason for abandoning the car. When we want a car we hire one which happens two or three times a year for a few days.
- being vegetarian, buying locally grown food when we can (but not mostly), buying some organic food – all that must help with our food footprint
- we have a good recycling system in Glasgow and it lets us recycle most of our refuse
- natural gas for heating
- our electricity usage is kept down by having a 3KW array of solar panels on the roof. It decreases our electricity usage by almost 100% if we remember to only use the washing machine, dishwasher during the day. And it has halved our fuel costs when the feed-in tariffs are taken into account.
I was a bit disappointed that the tool didn’t let me tell it I have solar panels! the effect is partly taken into account by the low electricity usage but that doesn’t allow for the amount of electricity we feed back into the grid.
Anyway that’s all good. But I can’t imagine how we’d get it down to 2 tonnes.
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