Can our house cut carbon emissions in half?

I’m worried about how hard it is for many people to take action to reduce their impact on the climate. It seems we can all start at home, where we’re in control of what we’re doing. So I decided to start my own journey in January 2021 and write about it. I’m going to post a few times each week, so people can see the ups and downs of my effort to cut our carbon emissions.

I live in Adelaide, Australia, in a city apartment with my partner and I work from home. Our household carbon emissions are low in some areas but a little higher in others.

I looked into the big areas where most people generate carbon emissions. The biggest are energy in our home, our local transport, how and where we travel for holidays, and what we eat. So then I was curious to estimate our household carbon emissions. I found an excellent carbon footprint calculator by Carbon Neutral.

It turns out our yearly emissions are 16 tonnes of CO2 equivalents. The average Australian home is around 20 tonnes. I found this in the ABC’s Fight for Plant A program screened last year. We are two people, a little smaller than the average size of 2.4 people (from Australian Bureau of Statistics data), so our emissions are lower. Our mix of emissions is also different to the averages — more on that in a later post.

The good science says that to keep global temperature rise under 1.5°C, we need to halve our emissions by 2030. That’s a 5% reduction every year for the next ten years. When you say it like that, it sounds achievable.

I’m looking for practical ways to change our behaviour that reduce carbon emissions. It would be great if these changes don’t compromise our lifestyle. Or they could even improve it. And I want the changes to be easy to start and easy to keep going.

I’ve also got this idea that if many people make changes together it has a bigger impact and we all feel good about it. You can find out more I’m doing with ‘crowds’ here.

I hope you start following my posts. If you are trying to reduce your carbon emissions, I would love to hear. And, if you have tips for me, that might help us all! Go ahead and leave me a message.