Jeremy, Calgary, Canada: My Carbon Footprint

Environment   Oct 28, 2020 by Jeremy Sinclair

I used the International Student Challenge Carbon Footprint Challenge to calculate my carbon footprint. 

My yearly footprint - 12,946kgs
Local Average - 18,132kgs
Global Average - ~4,000kgs

I was surprised at how much carbon is emitted due to things at my home. It is much higher than the global average, which may be due to the pandemic. People are always at my home which means lights, appliances, etc are in use much more then normal. Although my footprint is nearly 13k kilograms per year it is still ~5000kgs less then the average for my region, which surprised me. Mine is likely much lower as I am able to walk and take the bus to many of the places I need, so my transportation footprint is quite small. I think my carbon footprint could be greatly reduced if we replaced many of the bulbs in my home with more efficient LED bulbs, and attempting to reduce the time people leave them on.

It was a big surprise to me just how much carbon many of the things at my home emitted. We still have incandescent bulbs for the majority of our home, which are very inefficient and waste a lot of energy, but its hard for me to believe just how much. These are likely responsible for a lot of the carbon our home emits, as they are on for long periods of time due to people always being home. In my region, the majority of carbon emitted is due to transportation. This is very likely due to the fact in my city, cars have become required for much of anything, especially during 2020 due to the pandemic. Public transportation is running less often and doesn't go everywhere in the city, which is very spread out. So people are forced to drive nearly everywhere they need to go, every day. Alot of power for my city is also produced by coal and gas (roughly 87%), which also has a huge impact on the environment and our carbon footprint.

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