Calculate your carbon footprint

[mr friendly guy]

http://www.carbonneutral.com.au/

This website is mainly for Australians, but presumably there would be one for others as well. The trick lies in how efficient and how much coal we use for electricity.

Anyway, I decided not to input the waste or food use thing because its really difficult. However I did input the vehicle, and home energy use. This also doesn't take into account carbon emissions at work.

The numbers I used are

Vehicle
1. 18450 km per year based on the fact I had my car for one year 4 months for a total of 24600 Km

2. I use 8.42 L / 100 km base on the number of litres I pumped today to cover 430 km of travel

According to the chart I produce 3.979 tonnes of CO2 in one year from vehicle travel.

Home

Gas - My gas bills for the last year is 2954 units which adds 1.33 tonnes of CO2.

Electricity ie coal use - here is the good part. Its a net negative. I use 1194 units, but my solar panels in hot Australian son produces 1963 units. In other words I produce 769 units more. This has the net effect of reducing someone elses carbon emissions by 0.74 tonnes of CO2.

So I seem to use NET 4.569 tonnes of CO2 a year. According to my research Australian households can emit between 3-30 tonnes of CO2, with the average being 18 tonnes. A country such as China uses 5.3 tonnes of CO2 per capita.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... per_capita

So not bad for me living in a developed nation.

Yes I realise that the per capita is averaged out over the whole country, so China's polluting industries will drag their average up, while their rural residents will emit much less carbon emissions than me. However on the surface it seems I manage to use my energy relatively efficiently, from having a fuel efficient car (Nissan Tiida) and installing solar panels which not only offsets my electricity use, but it also nets me some cash as I pay 19.8785 cents / unit, but receive 47 cents for each unit I sell (gross not net units too).


Note 1 unit = 1 kwh

I thought this is a nice way for us to calculate how much carbon we emit, and perhaps find way where we can cut down, hopefully without sacrificing our lifestyles too much simply by being more efficient.

[LaCroix]

Actually, while solar electric does seemingly lower your footprint, in fact, it should increase your footprint if to take the high energy cost at construction into account. This is usually more than you can save over the panel's lifetime. Solar heating and wind are the non-cheaters in this area.

Is there any way to calculate the effect of your land, how much it reduces your footprint? I do own a bit of forest and some of land, all sucking in CO2. A quick calculation shows that I accrue about 120-150 tons of biomass per year that are composted, thus removed from the air. So per definition, this should be reducing my footprint by quite a fraction of this amount (I'm positive a part of this gets released back into the air).

[mr friendly guy]

I'd estimate mine to be a little higher than you got; I doubt our regions are ridiculously different, and I got 3.8 on the calculator. Adding in my heating oil, which another websited estimated to be about 2.5 tons a year, and I think ~6 or 7 tons / year is reasonable.

It depends on how efficient your coal stations are, and how much of your electricity the power company sources from non coal sources. Some modern Chinese coal power stations are more efficient than American ones for example. Some Canadian power stations also used some amounts of hydropower to generate electricity.

I've been thinking about installing solar heaters, though I don't own my home and I keep the heating costs down by just setting the heater very low, but, I hear the solar heaters actually work pretty well, even up here, and if I just did it in my main room... well, I might not turn down the heater and instead opt to just live in luxury, but maybe it'd be good enough anyway.

Solar electric is tempting, but I think the cost would be much higher and probably not as worth it.

I don't know too much about solar heaters. I have been told that they take a while to warm up the water as opposed to gas. But I might consider adding it in later on in the year if my research suggests its worthwhile. I would be interested to see how fast it will recoup my initial investment.

As for solar panels, it depends on a multitude of factors to decide the financial benefits.
1. Government subsidies for the initial panel and inverter
2. Feed in tariffs to pay for it.

The subsidy scheme nets you most value for money for a 1.5 kw panel + inverters in Australia. So if I wanted a 3 kw panel and inverter from the same manufacturer, the cost is not less than double, its not even double, its significantly more. This simply reflects the lower subsidies the government pays for panels greater than 1.5 kw.

The feed in tariffs are quite generous, especially since they pay for gross power produced, and not net power produced. I estimate within 3 years I would have recouped my investment, not even counting the increase value of my own home from solar panels. Fortunately I got in before they started decreasing the feed in tariff rate.

Now if there is no feed in tariffs, or no subsidy, the financial cost would not be worth it. You would be getting solar purely for ideological reasons, which is ok, just be aware of that.

Actually, while solar electric does seemingly lower your footprint, in fact, it should increase your footprint if to take the high energy cost at construction into account. This is usually more than you can save over the panel's lifetime. Solar heating and wind are the non-cheaters in this area.

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Most solar companies I see advertise it takes around 4 years to break even on the electricity used to manufacture it. Most panel manufacturers give a 25 year life span, although its efficiency weakens after say 5 years, depending on the manufacturer.

I am not sure about the high energy cost of production, but the big companies can manufacture in bulk to save costs, energy can they not? Most solar panels available here are made in China, where their solar manufacturers produce lots of panels.