Our road to carbon neutral won’t be easy or cheap
How good are we at managing our money and living within our means?
Or sticking to a diet and exercise plan to maintain a healthy weight and level of fitness?
What about a carbon budget?
If we spend more money than we have or consume more calories than we can burn off, the consequences can be dire — bankruptcy, poverty, homelessness, dissolution of family and health issues, including early mortality or chronic illnesses.
If we don’t stick to a carbon budget and release more carbon into our atmosphere than the planet can absorb, Earth becomes unlivable for human life. Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk may be able to afford to leave Earth, but the rest of us are firmly tied to terra firma.
The carbon we have already released into the atmosphere will take decades to be reabsorbed, but our carbon budgets will define how we reduce our greenhouse gas emissions 50 per cent by 2030, and 80 per cent by 2050.
The Transform WR climate action plan has identified major sources, such as transportation and buildings, but have you ever looked at your own household to figure out where you can reduce your carbon output?
REEP Green Solutions has an online assessment tool called Project Neutral. You have the option after the initial fiveminute survey to go into more detail by plugging in your hydro and gas use information from your bills, as well as your vehicle’s odometer reading. Check out Heather McDiarmid’s blog “Could my home go net zero?”
Based on my results, my carbon budget over the next nine years will be focused on home energy use and food choices. I don’t want to give up my morning vanilla yogurt, but I am working toward including more plant-based foods than animal-based ones, as well as being hypervigilant about not wasting food.
The home energy use is a bigger deal. It is a combination of behaviour, easy fixes and big-ticket items.
We can shut off lights when not in use and replace them all with LED bulbs, but our carbon budgets need an inventory of all household items that use energy, especially instant-on electronics and chargers that continuously use power.
The big-ticket items, such as heat pumps, tankless water heaters, replacement windows, insulation and solar panels, will have a bigger impact on halving our carbon output but also a bigger initial impact on our household budgets. Financial incentives are available, but we are still mostly on the hook to pay for “greenovations.”
Cost savings will come as greener options become mainstream and through greater energy efficiency. Solar panels are the best example of this. And we will all benefit from better air quality.
This is all good, but I am generally hesitant about replacing anything that isn’t broken. When does it make sense to keep what you have for as long as you can before purchasing a more energyefficient replacement? Or even doing without?
When I had to replace my cellphone years ago, I read an article that said the most environmentally friendly phone was the one I already owned. It’s an important consideration for any potential purchase.
Life cycle assessments that look at the stages of “raw material extraction to production, distribution, use and endof-life” can help with these decisions.
A 2019 European study did just this for food, housing, mobility, household goods and appliances to identify which stage had the biggest environmental impact.
Reducing our personal carbon output by 50 per cent in the next nine years is a voluntary effort, but we can’t wait until year eight to start, and we can’t do it alone. Political action is necessary to get us to clean renewable energy as quickly as possible.
Canada’s climate action advisory body is considering a carbon budget. Our local governments have already committed to one through Transform WR’s climate action plan.
But Kitchener city council recently missed out on an opportunity to “test” a carbon budget with the building at 16-20 Queen St. N. The decision whether to demolish or preserve a building should include life cycle assessments comparing greenhouse gas emissions for both options.
Our road to carbon neutral is not going to be easy or cheap, but we don’t have to reinvent the wheel. Both Edmonton, Alta., and Oslo, Norway, are leading the way.