Beginnings – dialling back on my direct carbon footprint

In late 2017 I made the first tentative steps on my Climate Journey and I started by taking stock of what “baggage” I was carrying as a part of my lifestyle and thinking of what I could easily do to lighten the load. At the time the biggest contributors to my “Carbon baggage” were flights, food and home energy; all part of what we might term “direct carbon footprint” . My carbon footprint was a whopping 18 tonnes of CO2 in 2017 (not including business flights) and 12 tonnes of that was from one thing, a return flight to New Zealand!. Typically I was flying long-haul every year for a family holiday and quite a lot on business too. We had already booked our next holiday in Canada and flying less on business was going to be difficult (although not impossible). I couldn’t instantly change this, however I made the commitment not to fly on holiday in future years.

So what could I change easily and immediately? The simplest thing was switching my energy provider to one which supplied 100% renewable electricity and green gas.

After my family holiday in Canada, when I finally realised the full consequences of the “baggage” that we all carry on our life journeys, my commitment to change was strengthened. It was definitely time to tackle the next things and have even more impact! I had already decided to switch to an electric car, my lovely Leaf which was delivered in November 2018. I also committed to driving less; why drive when I could walk, cycle or get the train. It made me fitter and I saved a lot of time (and frustration) not waiting in traffic jams! Taking stock at the end of 2018 I felt I had done pretty well and  looked forward to a 2019 in which my baggage would be much lighter. The journey was only just begun and already I could see progress!

Feeling encouraged I started to look at other things I could tackle. Food was still one of the bigger contributors to my Carbon Footprint, so what could I change? My eldest daughter decided to do “Veganaury” and switch to a vegan diet for January. To support her I committed to being vegetarian; I loved cheese too much to consider going dairy free at that stage. Eventually I took the plunge and after Easter I went meat and dairy free. We had our ups and downs; I have yet to find some vegan cheese which is palatable and some of the meat alternatives we tried were pretty awful. We discovered a whole range of new things which we really like and I lost those extra pounds I had been trying to shift for years. I actually don’t like cheese any more (too fatty) and the range of meat and dairy alternatives had improved dramatically. My husband and younger daughter still ate meat but much less often and only rarely do they have red meat so as a family we had been able to cut our “methane footprint” quite a lot. Recalculating my Carbon Footprint at the end of 2019 I was really excited to see that it was now down to 5.5 tonnes (excluding business flights) which was  a massive reduction!

Riding this wave of excitement we then took a look at what else we could do. One thing still to tackle was energy in the home. How could we do better there? We decided on two things; firstly looking to make our home more energy efficient and the second to start generating our own electricity from solar. You might ask why do the second thing if we had already switched to a green supplier? Simply put, because the grid is not powered completely by renewable energy (yet). It is perhaps better to think of switching to a green supplier as a way of investing in further development of renewables rather than buying 100% green electricity.

In early 2020 we had solar panels and a battery installed which means that around two thirds of our electricity has been self-generated since then – amazing! We also had a whole house energy survey carried out which identified a number of ways in which we can improve our energy efficiency, reducing our “carbon baggage” and our bills at the same time. Some of these were straight forward and relatively inexpensive things like cavity wall insulation and better loft insulation others were a bit more involved such as replacing the heating system from gas boiler to air source heat pump.

2020 has been an unusual year due to the pandemic so some of these things are still a work in progress. Despite this I estimate that my Carbon Footprint is now around 5.1 tonnes. Once we have completed the planned home energy improvement I am confident this will be reduced to less than 5 tonnes per year.

That is by no means the end of my Climate Journey; it is perhaps the end of the first leg. Now is a good time to reflect; I have shed most of the “heavy baggage” associated with direct carbon emissions. The next stage will involve looking more closely at some of the more hidden, indirect emissions and looking at other aspects of my “environmental baggage” as well.