Carbon Footprint

For this posting I looked into my family's greenhouse gas emissions.  I used the EPA's household footprint calculator to calculate my household and my cousin's household carbon footprints.  The calculator was easy to use and the link to it is at the end of this post.  If you would like to know the mathematical formulas for these calculations I have provided a link for that also.

If you are wondering what exactly what is a carbon footprint here is the definition from the EPA's website:

Carbon footprint:  The total amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted into the atmosphere each year by a person, family, building, organization, or company. A person's carbon footprint includes greenhouse gas emissions from fuel that he or she burns directly, such as by heating a home or riding in a car. It also includes greenhouse gases that come from producing the goods or services that the person uses, including emissions from power plants that make electricity, factories that make products, and landfills where trash gets sent.

There are three people living in my household and the calculator showed our usage to average 18,547 pounds of carbon dioxide per person.  My cousin's household has two people and their usage averaged to 12,183 pound per person.  The average emissions per person in the United States is 20,750 pounds per year.  The item causing the difference in our households is the fact that my husband drives from Kalamazoo to Middleville for work daily. He racks up almost 500 miles driving weekly.  My cousin and her husband are retired and the farthest they go is from Kalamazoo to Portage.  My husband's job is not going to be moving closer to Kalamazoo but he is in need of a new vehicle.  Currently he drives a minivan which gets 19 mpg.  If we replace his vehicle with one that gets 24 mpg the calculator show we would reduce our carbon emissions by 5,647 which is 10% of our total emissions.  This seems like the way to go since I can't reduce his drive time.

My cousin installed an energy efficient furnace and more insulation this year and it is making a big difference.  Her house is about 1500  sq ft. larger than mine yet her monthly gas for heat usage is 6.6 Mcf and mine is 11.3 Mcf. What she saves in gas she uses in electricity.  My family changed over many of our appliances to energy star rated.  It seems to make a difference in comparing my electric use to my cousins.  Her usage is 900kWh and mine is 625kWh.  That is a big difference. 

Another difference is that my cousin doesn't recycle anything and has no interest in starting.  My family recycles or reuses most everything we can.  One thing that is the same is that both our families are below the U.S. average emission.  I was happy to see that.  This was a good learning experience.  Knowing a quantity an actual number of how much replacing one vehicle for a more fuel efficient vehicle will make is useful.  Getting a more fuel efficient car is one way to reduce my family's carbon emissions.  I think we also need to look into better home insulation.  This carbon footprint comparison was a good learning experience for me.

EPA household greenhouse gas emissions calcuator link : http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/ind-calculator.html

EPA clean energy calculations and reference link:  http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/refs.html