Rowena at Home

Before Christmas 06 I signed up to a Tory project to encourage people to ’save a tonne of carbon’ and to blog about the process… 

Here’s a link to the Carbon Challenge – part of the excellent Quality of Life huge policy review the Tory party is currently undertaking…  http://qualityoflifechallenge.typepad.com/carbon_challenge/

Here is my blog that I posted when I first calculated my own carbon footprint…

 Carbon calculator a sobering experience for Mrs Smug Married with 2 children (no dog)

As rather a greenie Tory local district councillor (mum of 2 under 5s, thankfully both now out of washable nappies) I have been putting an increasing amount of effort into reducing both my personal and our District Council’s carbon emissions.  I’ve volunteered to take on this Carbon Challenge knowing that I’ve done the easy bits personally, and I’m wondering where to go next.  I’m hoping for some inspiration, some ideas …and doubtless some more challenge.

It is slighly unnerving to disclose one’s personal lifestyle habits and choices to all who choose to read it – so please be gentle with your feedback, and recognise that for each of us this carbon thing is a learning, evolving journey, and I believe only when taken in good heart will it get us globally anywhere.  But please do send some.

I feel rather smug.  The light bulbs are all low energy, even finally the downlighters; we have a solar thermal water heater that I’m thrilled with; the central heating is mostly off or down low, and we are much more aware of heating just the space, or the water, we are using; we have cavity wall insulation and at least 10” insulation in the loft; we shut our curtains and plug the gaps; we’ve definitely decided a small cheap wind turbine on the rafters is not a good idea for us (but I’d love to have some medium or biggie turbines in the countryside around us, as would at least one neighbour, but more of that later..).  We have plans to replace our oil fired boiler (old, inefficient and starting to break down) with a wood burning boiler and large hot water storage tank; and all the other straightforward things, and where do I find myself personally on the Carbon calculator….

Crikey – not only do I find myself contributing just a little over the UK average carbon amount on a personal basis (6 tonnes/annum) (am I being too honest?), I also find that as much as that again is added onto me by the carbon calculator as standard secondary carbon from things such as recreation, buildings and public services. 

It is sobering.  12 tonnes, and the guidance on ‘emissions/person to stop global warming’ is 2.5 tonnes per person.

More than double this – 6 tonnes – is emitted by my ‘average secondary footprint’ as calculated by the Carbon Footprint Calculator.  Perhaps I’m not really so bad, perhaps as we do think about what we buy before we buy it, we do recycle (hence helping using less ‘initial manufacture carbon’), and buy recycled goods and local food where possible.  However, of course, maybe we’re worse.  Maybe my recreation/public service consumption is above average.  Who knows, I won’t really go there for now.  Save to say that my primary carbon footprint is just above average.

The ‘biggies’ within it are heating the house, and driving my car.  I’m not surprised at the sources but I am surprised as to how much carbon I add to the atmosphere.

I play around with the ‘type of car’ dropdown and find I can vary my emissions by a tonne easily by classifying my car in a similar bracket… is it MPV diesel (better) or 4×4 diesel (considerably worse).  As our diesel 4×4 is not a big one and does over 40 to the gallon (we did look into fuel consumption when we bought it, though perhaps not as much as we would now, almost 5 years later), I hope perhaps it is not such an offender……Yet, even with a 1.2 supermini the calculator tells me that my average mileage (8000 miles /year) would produce 1.8 tonnes carbon, almost all my 2.5 tonne allowance.

I resolve in a Bridget Jones fashion to do the following:  1.  Consider all journeys more carefully.  Make more efforts to car share (I’ve made some but apart from the odd school run journey (4kg)) nothing substantive.  2.  Really try to use more local public transport.  I’ve been toying with the idea of taking the bus to council meetings in Hailsham, a 40 minute drive away… it is one of the few significant journeys I do that is busable, so must at least try….It’s been very cold and I’m always in a hurry and cutting journey times fine.  3.  Consider flights even more carefully.  We took just one last year to a friend’s wedding in Edinburgh, but I’ve often taken more in the past.  4.  Must commit to doing the wood burning boiler (this would make a big impact).  5. Finally and possibly the most significant, keep on with efforts to raise the sustainability and carbon profile in Wealden District Council.  I will post more about this in future, but it is a clear objective, it’s been gathering pace and achievement, but there is so, so much futher to go.

Rowena Moore

One of the questions asked by this challenge is ‘how easy is it to save a tonne of carbon?’.  On one level it is very easy simply by a few key decisions.  I can claim to have already saved more than my tonne by not doing what I had been going to do. 1.3 tonnes to be saved in April 07 according to the calculator by not flying to New York
….and a further 1.7 tonnes by chosing train over air for a family trip to Scotland

Easy to ‘save a tonne’ just by really thinking about whether or not, and how to go.
For a couple of years I have been planning a weekend in New York to visit an old school friend.  Last November, realizing it wasn’t going to happen before Christmas ’06 we made a plan to meet up the last weekend in April ’07.  Almost as soon as the phone was down I started to feel uneasy.  A long way, an unnecessary flight, a lot of upheaval… was it right to go?

When she was home for her annual Christmas visit, I told her.  It was the right decision but it was still disappointing to have to say, ‘I’m sorry, I feel it’s wrong to fly out,… I worry about my children’s world and I can’t honestly do this’.

George Monbiot calls them ‘love miles’and we always think traveling to see people is good… but the paradigm shifts with climate change and short breaks like this become a very different proposal.

So, 1.3 tonnes ‘saved’ by not flying to New York return.

Another easy ‘tonne saved’ closer to home is a visit to relations in Scotland for Easter. We rarely fly to Scotland as the train service is good, but it is interesting that the decision to train to Edinburgh from Sussex rather than fly gives a carbon ‘saving’ of 0.57 tonnes (600 kg for the glight versus 32 kg for the train), and as I buy the tickets for myself and two children I make that1.71 tonnes saved by not going by air.

No wonder the environmental movement is focusing the spotlight on budget airlines and ‘easy’ low cost flying… the comparative cost to the environment is huge.

However, this kind of carbon saving is ‘easy’ as it’s somewhat hypothetical.   The more I think about this one, the key question is not really, how easy is it to save a tonne, but rather how do you reduce your carbon emissions to the 2.5 tonne level?

Rowena Moore

We’re into March and I am thrilled that the solar hot water heating tubes we had installed last summer are starting to power away again as the days become longer and even see some blue sky through the persistent rainclouds.  On the 1st March our tubes took the hot water tank from 26 degrees to over 41 by 2pm. If you have space on your roof that is not overshadowed and faces roughly south I strongly recommend them.  Make sure you get a good installer though – there are a number of cowboys out there already.

As I hunt out ways to try to reduce our carbon footprint I am struck by just how uninformed we are in general, and how long it takes new technologies and ideas to be come established and widely debated.  When I first started researching renewable techonologies seriously around this time last year I found the situation very frustrating.  At a 2 day South East Regional Renewables conference I attended last autumn it was a big issue, particularly to the DTI speakers – just where can you find good information on different technologies, costs, viabilities, scales, key points to consider and alternatives to look at etc?

I am also amazed at how anal I get about the temperature of our hot water tank, how interesting I find it (if anyone cares to listen!) and how much easier it gets to ‘manage’ your system when you really understand how it works…

An example from our household here would be the solar tubes.. they work most effectively when the tank is relatively cold and so the heat differential between the hot water tank and what they can provide is greatest.  We are therefore best to use our hot water through the day (washing etc), so the tank is averagely cool during the day and has the chance to reheat from the sun when it has the opportunity, rather than use hot water later in the evenings so that we ‘use it up’ and then need to use the boiler again so we can have hot water first thing in the morning.  Its the same with the water butts – you can subsitute saved water for tap increasingly the more you think about how to use it.

But to the wider issues of carbon reduction we need to find ways to a) get about using less carbon in total (I’m finding this tough living in a very rural area with two children 5 and under), and b) heat and get our electricty from more carbon positive sources.. we buy renewables sourced electricty but I have my misgivings that our particular provider is doing more than send the minimal market signal.  I blogged earlier about our wood burner boiler plans, they remain…. but what I would really like to see is a big debate on wind farms in our part of the country (East/ West Sussex borders), to know how much potential turbines have around here, and whether other sources can offer good or better possibilities..  There are plans afoot in my village to instigate a ‘Transition town’ initiative – which looks like a good way for us to raise our knowledge and community understanding of these issues.  Also, my eye keeps alighting on articles about anaerobic digesters and ‘anaerobic reactors’ (the names are terrifying, the technology fantastic if the current Ecologist’s articles are anything to go by).. we live in a rural area… can anyone with practical experience of these technologies tell me briefly what scale you need to look at to make such things viable..?

In 10 years time I’m sure this will all be part of our shared cultural understanding and we will have magazines for renewables or power use the equivalent of ‘what car’ – that will tell anyone interested the salient facts, costs and trade-offs of different technologies and different models.. but right now it still feels like frontier territory.. the potential to make costly mistakes huge, and the time and effort of finding out still feels harder than should be necessary. 

There is a market opportunity here for someone!

Rowena Moore