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Beyond the global or regional carbon pricing strategies I've already discussed, I'd also like to work out a personal carbon price. A personal carbon price is effectively the price that I, personally, am willing to pay to offset a tonne of my own carbon emissions. It's a concept I've been thinking about more and more …
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Out of all the strategies that have been proposed to help the world toward a net-zero future, carbon pricing is one of the most compelling.
It's a conceptually straightforward concept and the argument goes something like this:
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When it comes to absolutely zero-cost ways to save energy and money the options are few and far between. Unless you’re routinely leaving your windows open in the winter, it basically comes down to turning things off, lowering your expectations of what’s acceptable in some regard, or increasing the efficiency of …
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Refrigeration is a significant contributor to household electricity usage. An energy survey conducted by the energy supplier Ovo1 estimated that "cold appliances", including both fridges and freezers, accounted for 16% of all household electricity usage.
I've been wanting to understand my own …
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Simply put, standby power is the amount of power something is using when it's not switched on. One example might be your television. When you turn the television off, it's unlikely you're going to unplug it from the wall. This means that it's going to draw a small amount of power even when it's "off".
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Space heating is one of the largest contributors to personal carbon dioxide emissions. Pretty much all this carbon dioxide comes from burning natural gas in domestic boilers. If we are to reduce emissions to zero, the only way that this can be achieved is to replace the burning of gas with electricity-based heating …
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Although I knew that transportation was a major part of carbon emissions, fully exploring my household data really drove that point home.
However, the high-level data only unearthed more questions that needed exploring. Are plane emissions primarily driven by the fact that we travel further by plane? How far do we …
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We are a typical UK household with a connection to the national gas grid. This means that we use natural gas to heat our home, heat our water, and cook our food.
Although I know how much gas we use overall, I don't have a breakdown on how much gas we use for each activity, or even each appliance. Working this out …
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One of the single largest contributors to personal carbon dioxide emissions is energy usage at home.
In my case, this includes natural gas and electricity, but for others it may involve bottled gas or heating oil. Regardless of the specific form, the reason behind carbon dioxide emissions from energy usage is the …
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How much carbon dioxide does our household release? Where do these emissions come from? How is it changing over time? These are the critical questions that need accurate data so that I can begin to plot a sensible route to get to net zero. Here I work out and plot our household carbon dioxide emissions.
What …
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