Super Eco

Photo credit: nathangibbs, flickr

I've long known that taking care with expenses and watching for energy efficiency is good for the planet and also my monthly bottom line. None of us like losing money on overly high energy bills, but many of us have no idea where to start.

For me, necessary change starts with figuring out my family's carbon footprint. For a long time, I would nod and smile when people talked about carbon footprints, having no idea what they really were. According to the dictionary, a carbon footprint is essentially the amount of carbon dioxide an individual, family or business produces over a set period of time. The idea of figuring out my own carbon footprint usually makes me want to throw up, because I live 20 miles from my job and can’t afford to replace all my appliances. I know I bury my head in the sand a lot, but you can’t fix what you don’t realize is broken.

A search of carbon footprint calculators yields an overwhelming number of tools ranging from comprehensive to very simple. Some offer an immediate way to offset your carbon footprint via investments in clean energy, planting trees and capturing methane in farms and landfills. Others just calculate your carbon footprint and encourage you to reduce it by changing your purchasing and traveling behavior in the future.

Here is a quick summary of my carbon footprint, as determined by several carbon calculators. Al Gore, avert your eyes:

Fancy, but Complicated

If you’re really serious, you can calculate your total energy consumption using a complex calculator at Home Energy Saver, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the ENERGY STAR program.  It is also supported by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s PATH Program, the California Air Resources Board, the California Energy Commission’s Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program and Touchstone Electric Cooperatives (phew!).

This is a hard-core calculator, certainly not for the faint of heart. If you really want to know how much energy you’re using, you’ll need to walk around your house and look at the labels on all your appliances, and maybe even dig out the title on your house to figure out how big it is. (I was thrown for a loop when the calculator asked me how wide and deep my rectangular-shaped house is.) It’s pretty impressive, though, with questions regarding the depth of your attic insulation and the number of windows on the north side of your house.

After all the numbers are entered, the calculator tells you not only your energy consumption and CO2 output, but also how much money you could be saving on energy and how to achieve that savings. (I still need to input quite a bit of information, but the initial results based on my ZIP code and a little bit if information about my appliances and the general layout of my house tell me I could be saving as much as $523 a year in energy costs. I bet I could plant a whole bunch of trees for that. Or maybe install a new triple-pane window.)

Easier, Less Scientific

If the thought of measuring every room in your house sends you straight for the remote control, there are simpler solutions. The Terrapass calculator asked only about my monthly electric and gas bills, and then told me my home has a carbon footprint of 34,339 lbs of CO2 per year. After I added our two family cars, the less-driven 1998 Ford Explorer and the often-driven family car, a 2009 Toyota Corolla, our family footprint went up to 62,000 lbs of CO2. Then it got interesting – the calculator told me I could offset the whole kit and caboodle with $370, which Terrapass provides via investment in clean energy sources (such as wind power), the destruction of farm-created methane and landfill gas recapture.

CarbonFootprint offers another calculator that takes into account not only your car and airplane travel, but also your bus and rail travel and lifestyle habits, such as vegetarianism, fashion (whether or not you buy secondhand clothes) and recycling habits. I apparently am responsible for 16.2 tons of CO2, which made me feel horrible until I noticed my footprint is smaller than the American average of 20.2 tons. Unfortunately, Americans are energy wasters. Our average output is way, way larger than the 2 tons it should be or the 4 tons the world population averages. CarbonFootprint also offers a variety of ways to offset your carbon footprint, including reforestation in Kenya, investments in clean energy and UK tree planting.

I’m frankly amazed at the resources available online to kick-start an eco-friendly 2009. Whether or not you plant a bunch of trees or finally upgrade to Energy STAR appliances, education and awareness have a way of creeping into daily habits. I found myself closing the curtains against the cold after having the seven north-facing windows on my house brought to my attention. Maybe I’ll even start 2010 more efficiently than ever before.