My actions, my emissions…
I think of my personal emissions in terms of my transportation, my energy use, and my consumption. Katie Rose and I recently bought a fully electric vehicle this year and that has reduced our vehicle transportation CO2 emissions significantly. With NC's grid being about 50% carbon free it is a good start. Air travel is a different story as it still represents the largest share of my travel CO2 emissions. While I drive and take the train whenever possible, there is no substitute for the distance and time saved by air travel.
In terms of energy, my space heating, cooking and water heating is all natural gas. These were the appliances that were in the house when we purchased it and right now the energy cost of natural gas is just lower than the cost for electric heating, so I would see a negative return on investment if I switched these out. I probably will change out my oven/range first because I don’t like the smell of gas when I start it up. The last thing I will change is the space heating, which accounts for the majority of my natural gas use by far, however, it is a really nice heat and heat pumps are expensive so I would need to see a significant cost savings to implement that switch before the furnace reaches its natural end of life.
My current house is not situated for photovoltaic and my tree canopy would make any production not worth the cost. However, this year we did put solar panels on our rental house. I have been wanting to do this for years, and this was the first year that I found a company that would allow me to finance the panels. The monthly cost is almost equivalent to what my renter was paying for his electricity. In consultation with my renter, we agreed that I would put on the panels and his rent would go up, but his electricity would then be included in his rent (the power bill now comes to me directly). This worked for all parties, my actual costs remained constant because of the rent increase, his cost remained constant because his power bill just rolled into his rent, and the months when he uses more electricity than the panels provide, I can count that energy cost as a loss on my taxes. Basically I was able to put clean electrons on the grid and the only thing it cost me was an additional debt load against my credit.
Food is another place where I actively reduce my personal CO2 emissions. One change I have made is the removal of almost all beef from my diet. I have a rule that the only beef I consume must be pasture raised within 100 miles of where I consume it which gets me out of imported and factory farmed beef production entirely. The rest of the meat I consume is also locally raised and I purchase at the Durham farmers market, plus I harvested 70 pounds of venison last year, so my overall food carbon footprint is quite low. I also supplement with my garden, although that only produces food for about 6 months out of the year. My next target for improvement is to apply my beef standards to all meat I eat in restaurants.
From an investment perspective, that is fairly easy as the vast majority of my long term investments are in targeted growth mutual funds that are fossil fuel free.
The purchasing of both durable and non-durable goods remains a challenge. I am in need of a computer, a phone and a monitor upgrade. My monitor and computer are both 7 years old and my phone is 2 years old however they are all experiencing issues. About 70% of the carbon footprint of each device comes from the manufacturing process so keeping electronics as long as possible is the best way to keep that CO2 footprint low so I have a goal of 8 years for any computer or monitor and 4 years for a phone. I think I can make my 8 year mark but I don’t think my phone will make it to four.
That's it in a nutshell.
