A CO2 diet – Saving money by cutting your CO2 emissions
Our CO2 usage graph
Regular readers will know that a while back we got an energy monitor to see just how much electricity we were using on a day to day basis. At the time it prompted us to go around switching things off standby and being a little more careful than normal. Since then things have slipped a little but not too much. However an article about CO2 emissions from average households and people going on a CO2 diet in this months National Geographic got me motivated again.
Yes, saving the earth and reducing emissions is good enough motivation in itself, but the financial savings that can be made are just as motivating for us. So, I thought I’d try to find out what the average consumption is for households in the UK and see how we fare in comparison. Unfortunately finding out the average consumption / emissions wasn’t that easy. There are however plenty of CO2 calculators available on the web, the best of which is probably the Act on CO2 calculator from DirectGov, which does at least allow you to compare your Carbon Footprint to the national average.
It isn’t going to be completely accurate of course but it does give you an idea of your consumption. I took the test for our whole household and got the following results:
Our home uses 1.64 tonnes of CO2 per year compared to the national average of 4.53 tonnes. Not surprising that we did well here as it is a brand new bungalow with good insulation and heating, and energy efficient light bulbs etc.
Our appliances use o.29 tonnes of CO2 per year compared to the national average of 1.62 tonnes. Again not too surprising as we have ‘A’ rated appliances throughout and don’t leave things on standby if possible. I thought that the electricity used by my weather station computer being on 24 hours a day may have affected this but our overall electricity consumption is still pretty low.
Our Travelling uses 6.69 tonnes of Co2 per year compared the the national average of 3.81 tonnes. Ooops! At least we know where our efforts at improving should be aimed. Excuses? Well, we do live in a rural area so public transport is pretty much out of the question. It also means that we do have to get in the car to go almost anywhere as the nearest shop is a couple of miles away and for anything other than the basics we need to head to Aberystwyth which is 10 miles away. I also have quite a big car which probably isn’t 100% necessary if I’m totally honest, but it was when I bought it, and I do still need something fairly big when going away with all my toys. We should try to improve this, but doing so isn’t as easy as it sounds. I did also say that we take 1 short haul and 1 medium haul flight each year as well, and this is probably an exaggeration. It is only the last two years that we’ve taken medium haul flights and we don’t always take a short haul flight either, so maybe it it as bad as it sounds!
Overall we use 8.62 tonnes of CO2 compared to the national average of 9.96 tonnes. If we could reduce the travel emissions we’d be doing really well.
Take the test and let us know how you compare.
