Global Warming: Trying to Reduce Footprint

For 2019, my New Year's resolution will be to monitor my personal CO2e emissions and meet the 2030 target from IPCC. To reach the 1.5 degree target, the global emissions must be 45% lower, compared with 2010. By 2050, the emissions must be net-zero.

Average Footprint
The numbers for the average footprint are a bit confusing and some clarification is needed. A person (in Sweden for this example) emitted almost 11 tonnes of CO2e in 2010.

Almost 4,5 tonnes are produced in  Sweden and more than six tonnes abroad. The abroad emissions include imports, such as Brazilian beef, American/Chinese Iphones and holiday travels abroad.

Most of the emissions from a person is from his/her personal consumption (7 tonnes 2010), but a fraction is from hospitals, police, schools, care of children and elderly (4 tonnes).

I'll use the Swedish web site klimatkontot to calculate my personal emissions.

Step 1: Measure Current Footprint.
The first step is to understand how much I emitted the last year. My personal consumption generated  4.7 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents for 2018. Adding 3.8 tonnes for public emissions, I got 8.5 tonnes. Pretty good, but not at all sufficient.

I eat meat, I travel with airplanes and I own a diesel car so there is some room for improvement.
Solar power panels for a mobile base station.
Using solar power will reduce carbon footprint.
Traveling to Africa increased my carbon footprint in 2014. A lot.
Step 2: Set a Target for 2019
I want to emit less than 55% of the average personal emissions, compared to 2010. That is 3.85 tonnes of CO2e of personal consumption. That's an aggressive target and I don't know if I'll meet that.

Step 3: Check How It's Going
This step is the most important one! I need to measure how much I actually consume and make well-informed forecasts so that I know whether I'll meet the target or not. I'll post the reports every months as a side note to my regular blog posts during 2019.

Screen dump from OneTonne

Pieces of Advice for Reducing Footprint
After playing around with Klimatkontot and the smartphone app OneTonne, I saw some areas that will make big reductions:
  • Reduce air and car travels!
  • Reduce meat consumption!
  • Don't buy that much new furniture or electronics!
Small reductions are important too!
  • Reduce food waste.
  • Recycle used packaging materials such as plastics, glass, metal and cardboard.
  • Buy second-hand clothes once in a while.
There are plenty of things that anyone can do to reduce our footprints.

Reducing the Public Emissions
There is a lot of debate about the public emissions, and that debate is partly out-of-scope for this blog. I want to focus on what I can do, and ending up in political debates will take too much time and focus.

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