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6 Jan 2024 : How lightly did I tread in 2023 #
For the last four years I've been offsetting my carbon emissions. In the long run I accept that offsetting isn't a sustainable way to address the climate crisis, but until my CO2 output reaches zero I still think it's better to offset than to not. Apart from attempting to address the balance of my impact on the world it also offers two other benefits.
First there's the personal financial cost I incur from having to pony up a hundred quid or thereabouts each year. That's a good way to incentivize myself to reduce my carbon footprint in the future. Second there's the active process of interrogating my consumption: working through the calculations is a great way to focus the mind, confront the consequences of my personal decisions and think about what I could improve on in the future.
Last year it took until April for me to run the calculations and act on them. This year I've done much better. That's partly driven by my New Year's Resolution to make at least one ecological improvement per month during the year. Even though this isn't a new thing for me, when I made the resolution the intention was always to count this as one of the tasks. And so it is.
Here's the table that shows which carbon emissions came from which activities. I've included all previous years so that some trends can be captured. I should emphasise that this represents household emissions, so covers two people, both Joanna and me. For comparison average emissions for individuals in the UK is 5.40 tonnes (10.80 tonnes for two people).
The headline result is that our total carbon emissions have been reduced compared to last year. That's mostly driven by a large decrease in the number of flights, from twenty in 2022 to just four last year. Twenty flights is a large number, a consequence of living in Finland. This year I moved back to the UK in February. That meant some flights to tidy up my life in Finland, but I've not flown again since then. In 2024 I'm hoping to push that down to zero flights.
Reduced flights was partly offset by increased train and bus travel, largely due to my weekly commute between Cambridge and London for work. I took the journey 88 times, giving me a massive total distance travelled of 19 638 km by national rail. Thankfully trains are also far more carbon efficient than planes, so while distance travelled only reduced by a factor of 1.5, carbon emissions reduced by a factor of 5.75.
One potentially confusing thing about the numbers is that natural gas usage is a negative figure. We switched from a gas boiler to a heat pump, with the result that our gas usage tumbled. But of course it wasn't negative! The negative value is due to our power company overestimating our gas usage as a result of our heating change. The overestimate was included in the figures for last year and this negative figure redresses that.
The following table gives more detail about the numbers used to perform the calculations. After pulling these together I then fed them into Carbon Footprint Ltd's carbon calculator as I have in previous years to generate the results.
As in previous years I've used the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to offset my carbon output. The money will go to pay for improved cooking stoves in Malawi, a scheme managed by Ripple Africa.
First there's the personal financial cost I incur from having to pony up a hundred quid or thereabouts each year. That's a good way to incentivize myself to reduce my carbon footprint in the future. Second there's the active process of interrogating my consumption: working through the calculations is a great way to focus the mind, confront the consequences of my personal decisions and think about what I could improve on in the future.
Last year it took until April for me to run the calculations and act on them. This year I've done much better. That's partly driven by my New Year's Resolution to make at least one ecological improvement per month during the year. Even though this isn't a new thing for me, when I made the resolution the intention was always to count this as one of the tasks. And so it is.
Here's the table that shows which carbon emissions came from which activities. I've included all previous years so that some trends can be captured. I should emphasise that this represents household emissions, so covers two people, both Joanna and me. For comparison average emissions for individuals in the UK is 5.40 tonnes (10.80 tonnes for two people).
| Source | CO2, 2019 (t) | CO2, 2020 (t) | CO2, 2021 (t) | CO2, 2022 (t) | CO2, 2023 (t) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 0.50 | 0.40 | 0.59 | 1.14 | 1.66 |
| Natural gas | 1.18 | 1.26 | 1.66 | 0.81 | -0.25 |
| Flights | 5.76 | 2.26 | 1.90 | 5.34 | 1.32 |
| Car | 1.45 | 0.39 | 0.39 | 1.01 | 1.00 |
| Bus | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.31 |
| National rail | 0.08 | 0.01 | 0.02 | 0.00 | 0.70 |
| International rail | 0.02 | 0.01 | 0.00 | 0.04 | 0.01 |
| Taxi | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 | 0.01 |
| Food and drink | 1.69 | 1.11 | 1.05 | 1.35 | 1.07 |
| Pharmaceuticals | 0.26 | 0.32 | 0.31 | 0.06 | 0.13 |
| Clothing | 0.03 | 0.06 | 0.06 | 0.12 | 0.23 |
| Paper-based products | 0.34 | 0.15 | 0.14 | 0.37 | 0.38 |
| Computer usage | 1.30 | 1.48 | 0.75 | 0.93 | 0.23 |
| Electrical | 0.12 | 0.29 | 0.19 | 0.03 | 0.01 |
| Non-fuel car | 0.00 | 0.10 | 0.00 | 0.12 | 0.92 |
| Manufactured goods | 0.50 | 0.03 | 0.03 | 0.05 | 0.11 |
| Hotels, restaurants | 0.51 | 0.16 | 0.15 | 0.10 | 1.21 |
| Telecoms | 0.15 | 0.05 | 0.04 | 0.03 | 0.05 |
| Finance | 0.24 | 0.24 | 0.22 | 0.04 | 0.02 |
| Insurance | 0.19 | 0.11 | 0.10 | 0.04 | 0.04 |
| Education | 0.05 | 0.00 | 0.04 | 0.01 | 0.00 |
| Recreation | 0.09 | 0.06 | 0.05 | 0.03 | 0.06 |
| Total | 14.47 | 8.50 | 7.73 | 11.65 | 9.25 |
The headline result is that our total carbon emissions have been reduced compared to last year. That's mostly driven by a large decrease in the number of flights, from twenty in 2022 to just four last year. Twenty flights is a large number, a consequence of living in Finland. This year I moved back to the UK in February. That meant some flights to tidy up my life in Finland, but I've not flown again since then. In 2024 I'm hoping to push that down to zero flights.
Reduced flights was partly offset by increased train and bus travel, largely due to my weekly commute between Cambridge and London for work. I took the journey 88 times, giving me a massive total distance travelled of 19 638 km by national rail. Thankfully trains are also far more carbon efficient than planes, so while distance travelled only reduced by a factor of 1.5, carbon emissions reduced by a factor of 5.75.
One potentially confusing thing about the numbers is that natural gas usage is a negative figure. We switched from a gas boiler to a heat pump, with the result that our gas usage tumbled. But of course it wasn't negative! The negative value is due to our power company overestimating our gas usage as a result of our heating change. The overestimate was included in the figures for last year and this negative figure redresses that.
The following table gives more detail about the numbers used to perform the calculations. After pulling these together I then fed them into Carbon Footprint Ltd's carbon calculator as I have in previous years to generate the results.
| Source | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 1 794 kWh | 1 427 kWh | 3 009 kWh | 4 101 kWh | 5 975 kWh |
| Natural gas | 6 433 kWh | 6 869 kWh | 9 089 kWh | 4 439 kWh | -1 362 kWh |
| Flights |
36 580 km 20 flights |
14 632 km 8 flights |
25 542 km 14 flights |
36 042 km 20 flights |
7 233 km 4 flights |
| Car | 11 910 km | 2 000 km | 3 219 km | 8 458 km | 8 369 km |
| Bus | 1 930 km | 40 km | 168 km | 133 km | 3 080 km |
| National rail | 5 630 km | 400 km | 676 km | 0 km | 19 638 km |
| International rail | 64 km | 1 368 km | 513 km | 8 684 km | 2 322 km |
| Taxi | 64 km | 37 km | 100 km | 100 km | 100 km |
| Tube | 0 km | 0 km | 0 km | 0 km | 100 km |
As in previous years I've used the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to offset my carbon output. The money will go to pay for improved cooking stoves in Malawi, a scheme managed by Ripple Africa.
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