Building understanding of per-capita emissions by tracking our own. Family carbon audit for 2022.

Takeaways

2022 emissions were about 9.22 tonnes of CO2-equivalent, down 12% from the year before.

Here is a breakdown of how 2022 compared to prior years:

Good

As expected from the prior year, mostly reductions this year come from living a whole year in an apartment in Sweden rather than at the ouse in the US.

We also made another change: We finally got an EV! This significantly reduced our car emissions this year.

Bad

Again, flying, and it got worse this year by a lot.

Every year I look for airlines offering electrofuel flights, every year I’m dissapointed.

Considered taking a more direct route, if we took an overnight train to Germany first we could fly direct to St Louis. Reductions from this would be about 1 ton CO2e per year for the whole family.

Another option would be to fly a shorter route - CPH to NY - and take Amtrak. Amtrak is not particularly low emissions, 30% less than flying on average, since it’s all diesel engines on the interior routes. Still, this option would reduce annual emissions by about 3 tonnes of CO2Eq per year - at the cost of 3 extra travel days.

Actions

• Review ways to reduce our food emissions
• Try the NY route?

Methodology

Same as in 2018