Building understanding of per-capita emissions by tracking our own. Family carbon audit for 2021.

Takeaways

Our 2021 emissions were - approximately - 10.4 Tonnes of CO2eq, for two adults and one kid. That means we reduced our emissions 40% compared to the year before.

This means we’ve cut our emissions 65% since we started tracking them in earnest in 2018.

Here is a breakdown of how 2021 compared to prior years:

Good

The primary driver here is a significant change:

  • We moved to Sweden in June (and from a detached house to an apartment)
  • We replaced our hybrid car with an EV

The move to Sweden is.. intense, and gives an idea of how much emissions are “systemic” vs personal. Eg. by living in Sweden we:

  • Reduce our emissions per kWh electricity by roughly an order of magnitude (~29g/kwh sweden vs 780g/kwh MO)
  • Heat with district heating instead of natural gas
  • No longer need to drive for daily life; we walk, bike and use public transit; we use the EV for family visits, hikes and large grocery trips

We ourselves didn’t really do anything here, it’s just the systems around us are much better for the environment. It’s a triple-whammy of 10x lower grid emissions, no natural gas heating and no need for a car.

You still see Electric, Cars and Natural Gas as major segments, because we were still living in the US for the first 6 months of the year. I expect another steep drop next year as the entire year will be in Sweden.

Bad

Same as last year - flying will get worse, we’re not willing to give up letting our kid meet his US family. Need to find a way to travel to US with lower impact, still searching for that.

Food impact increased, but actually not from diet change - I’m just using a better method to count. Before I’d done a “food diary” and calculated emissions from that. This year I saved all grocery receipts for one month and calculated emissions from each purchased item. Naturally that method covered more ground.

Food will clearly be a major place to improve next.

Actions

  • Review ways to reduce our food emissions
  • Explore ways to travel to see family with lower impact

Methodology

Same as in 2018, except with grocery emissions calculated from actual receipts.