Reducing My Emissions

Here is an update on my New Years resolution.

Using a spreadsheet that is inspired on Klimatkontot, I note my consumption of housing, travels, food and commodities on a weekly basis. I calculate relevant sums or averages of that consumption and I use that when updating Klimatkontot. For the February report, two months are facts and the rest is predictions.

The blue rows are the past weeks and the green row is the current week.
 The future weeks are estimated to the average of the blue weeks.
For food, I've added the annual CO2e emissions per weekly portion.
Red meat such as lamb and beef is very CO2e-intense.
Replacing with other meat (or preferably vegetarian food) will reduce the emissions a lot. 

I fill in the consumption weekly for three reasons:

• I need to know my actual consumption, without any happy numbers or green-washing.
• I need to understand what actions are efficient in order to reduce my global warming footprint.
• I need an immediate feedback of my behavior. It is so easy to make a promise and to forget about it in the everyday life. With the self-reporting, it's easy to remember my promise and go for the more climate friendly option.  

My forecast predicts slightly more than four tonnes this year.
Consumption of furniture will be the big concern this year.

So far, I see great improvements in my CO2e-aware life. The forecast is 4.1 tonnes of CO2e in private emissions, eight percent above the target. These are my biggest challenges:

• Food waste - When feeding a toddler, there will be leftovers that I'd rather eat than throw away. This is increasing my meat consumption by one portion or two per week.
• Our Car - we currently drive some 5000 km per year, but our service technician indicated that a diesel car should travel more than that in order to stay healthy. This is a dilemma - should we take care of the car and avoid future repairs or should we reduce the driving in order to reduce the CO2e emissions? Fortunately, we have some friends that needs to borrow our car once in a while. The car gets more miles, without adding to our CO2e emissions and our friends can cope without a car for some time.
• New House, New Furniture, New Bathroom? This part may break my promise. We're looking for a new house to live in and that will increase our emissions:
• A bigger home will require more energy for heating.
• We will need to buy three or four pieces of stuffed furniture: A bed, a sofa and one or two stuffed armchairs for the three of us. A piece of stuffed  will generate roughly 700 kg of CO2e. Two pieces will consume more than one third of my promise. I've assumed that we'll buy five pieces (2,5 for me) of stuffed furniture for the new home, so if don't move this year, meeting the 3.8 tonnes resolution will be easy. 
• There will likely be a need for some renovations of the house. A renovation will generate some emissions too.
• Air Travels - We will visit a close relative that lives abroad. Travelling more than a thousand kilometers by train with a toddler will be too hard, but we can try to travel with trains later when our child/children are a bit older. I have some strong opinions about the lack of coordination between European train companies and that deserves a blog post of its own.  

I see some beneficial side effects to my project. By using my bike on a daily basis, I get some training. By reducing my intake of alcohol, red meat and candy, I'll improve my health. And reducing food waste and reducing the overall consumption reduces some costs.

There is some debate whether the focus should be on what individuals are doing, or if we should rather act to "change the system". Reducing my individual emissions is necessary but insufficient. Governments, companies and other communities need to act too (read: reduce emissions rapidly), in order to make the Paris goals happen.

I have decided not to wait for anyone else to act.