Reducing my carbon footprint

It's been a while since my last blog. I've been on vacation and have added a load of carbon to the atmosphere by taking a long haul flight to Switzerland. I felt guilty about it so I bought carbon offsets with my flight ticket (but at about $10 AUD per tonne, Qantas seems to have massively underpriced CO2). Anyway, what I am trying to say is that I suspect that I am like many people - I am concerned and want to do my bit but there's a limit to how much lifestyle I am really willing to sacrifice. So I thought I'd get scientific about it. What exactly is my personal carbon footprint and what can I change that will have a big impact without without huge lifestyle sacrifices?

I used a web-based carbon footprint calculator (http://www.1degree.com.au/carbon_calculator) to estimate what my annual CO2 emissions were 6 months ago before I started to make any changes. The answer was 26 Tonnes of CO2 per year - 12 Tonnes more than the Australian average! The CO2 was roughly equally split between household, car, and flights:

• 10 tonnes from household electricity (I don"t have gas so everything is electric).
• 10 tonnes from driving a heavy 4WD 25,000km per year (mostly commuting to Canberra).
• 6 tonnes from flying (about 5 domestic and 2 international flights per year).

When I re-calculate my footprint today after making some changes it comes to 5 tonnes:

• Zero tonnes from household electricity - because I pay the premium for green energy and I changed all bulbs to low energy types.
• 5 tonnes from driving - same number of km but I got rid of the 4WD and bought a mid sized diesel (VW Tiguan).
• Zero tonnes from flights - because I buy carbon offsets with flights.

I can get the 5 tonnes down to about 1 or 2 tonnes in future when really fuel efficient cars are commercially available (I'm hanging out for the VW 1L - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_1-litre_car - but I'll have to wait till 2012 before it's available).

Now the reality here is that, other than getting a more fuel efficient car and changing all my light bulbs for low energy bulbs, I haven't really done anything other than pay more for electricity and flights. It's basically my choice to pay more for my lifestyle rather than significantly change it. The obvious question is whether the extra payments really do translate into lower CO2 emissions or whether Origin Energy and Qantas are having me on?

• The electricity is accredited green power (see http://www.greenpower.gov.au/home.aspx) and is costing me an extra $300 per year which works out to about $50 per tonne of carbon (I reduced my consumption from the 9 tonne equivalent of 6 months ago). The price is pretty close to the USD $30 to $40 per tonne that seems to be the most accepted figure. Also the government green power accreditation scheme feels fairly rigorous. So I have a high confidence that my power consumption really does match up to green wind power generation.
• The Flights are another story. The premium I pay equates to about $10 per tonne which seems too cheap. Obviously you cant power a plane with wind power so the mechanism used is "carbon offsetting" which basically means that Qantas need to buy carbon credits from a project like tree-planting that absorbs an equal amount of carbon to that emitted by the flight. You can read what Qantas have to say about this at http://www.qantas.com.au/travel/airlines/fly-carbon-neutral/global/en. Personally I don't find it very compelling. It feels like "feel good" marketing blah-blah without a really solid foundation in thoroughly certified and audited offset projects.

So in summary I've reduced my footprint from 26 tonnes to 6 tonnes via a combination of actually reducing energy and fuel consumption and also paying for green energy and fuel offsets. Of course if we all do that overnight then there wouldn't be enough green energy generating capacity to meet demand. But reality isn't like that - it will take years and many people will not voluntarily choose to pay more. My changes mean that there is an increased commercial incentive (actually a legal imperative) for my energy supplier to build more wind farms. If only I could feel more confident in Qantas carbon offset claims..