House emissions
 

We all know the emissions of our cars, those of us in the UK are reminded every time we open our vehicle registration documents, or when our annual bill arrives to pay our road tax based on our cars C02 emissions (free for low emissions) For others, C02 figures are easily obtained with fuel usage numbers.

But what about our houses? How many people know the C02 emissions of their homes? How many people care? Most of us don't even think about the pollution from the energy production when we switch our lights on, or turn the heating up do we? How do they compare to our cars?

Well for interest and comparison sakes, the C02 emissions that my house was responsible for last year were roughly 2.35 tonnes (or 8059 KWH of energy)

My car produced roughly 2.43 tonnes of C02, so in fact the carbon dioxide emissions are surprisingly similar! This year however my energy usage is down 28%, so I should see a benefit. I thought my house would have a larger carbon footprint than my car, but I was wrong.

Anyone else care to compare or discuss?

great subject draig I will look into the figures here and get right back to ya

Interesting. We get nothing like this in California.

When you get your bill for heating, A/C, electricity etc, is there not a breakdown? Your energy provider should be able to offer insight into energy usage, and as a result related emissions.

You get detailed info here in Texas (deregulated energy, companies compete - it shows)
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This is a good thread.
I just moved into my new home. It's only 8 years old. In comparison to older homes. It is very energy efficient. That's why I stretched my budget to buy this one. I could have gone much cheaper.
I'm also happy that I have an electric cooperative. Rather than a for profit electric company. Regular rates are 11.(something) per KWH. For heat, I have a second meter. Charged 5.7 cents a KWH.
I have thermostats in each room. I can run them separate temps with doors closed. The bathroom will be the warmest.
I also have a wood burning stove in the basement. Considering how I'll use it.
For summer. I can't see using my air conditioning. The basement is nice and cool. So why spend the money?
Only thing I'm wasting energy on is the washing machine. I bought a good ole machine. I couldn't afford a new one. Also the new high efficiency ones seem to have reliability problems?
My lawn mower is gas and wastes energy. Considered an old fashioned rotary push mower. My back yard is a hill. They say they don't work well on hills. Also, with my injury. I need to just get it done. Can't fool around.
I'm just starting. I'm sure I won't have any record to compare. Will look at the bill. Am sure, if anybody provides good info, this co-op will.

I think your utility company can give you the historical billings for that address.

So can you guys work out the C02 emissions from your bills via KWH cost? My energy provider converts all 3 online to compare, so I can see C02 output, KWH used or just cost per month. I too have a fairly old house, no insulation, single paned sash windows that rattle a lot, generally there are a lot of places heat can escape. Ideally, id like a modern efficient home with solar and a small wind turbine, possibly a small water wheel turbine if I'm by the river. But hey, we cant always have what we want.

Our bills do not list emissions either in Southern British Columbia. Oh I forgot we use hydro Electricity that does not pollute. New homes can not have a wood burning stove installed in major cities either.

Bur we have a "green levy on auto fuel, making our fuel costs highest in North America.

No smoke without fire!
 

If we go by statistics, 2015 marked CO2 level more than 440PPM. It is advisable to keep a check on the CO2 emission. Often many victims fall victim to disasters. It is here that smoke alarm systems come in handy. Often people have them connected to monitoring systems. Fire alarm monitoring services recommend placing a smoke detector/monitoring system in every bedroom and living space.

This thread just goes to show how governments and populations can focus so much on one thing (emissions from automobiles) that they don't see the big picture. For example, my understanding is that the 5 biggest ships in the world emit more pollution combined than all the cars in the world, and yet, who is fighting for clean air (or reduced greenhouse gassed) by reducing pollution caused by ships? (Hint: Pert' near nobody).

Then we have the self-congratulatory talking heads in Washington DC gloating about the looting of Volkswagen because they caught a cheater and they are "cleaning up the air"... IN TEST LABS, while real-world car emissions go unregulated, and are shown to be many multiples higher than lab-legal levels, for diesel and gasoline powered vehicles, across virtually all models and brands. Good demo of "penny wise and pound foolish."

Agree with you 100% on that, shipping and air travel contribute huge amounts of unrestricted unregulated pollution and pay very little if no carbon based taxes at all. A typical passenger jet burns through 4000 gallons just to take off, and scatters various pollutants, especially N0x all over the city below. Then there's huge scepticism surrounding volcanos, some say these natural beauties pump out more C02 than mankind does every year, who knows?

As for VW, we have a saying here: "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones" or in the case of the US, glacial sized boulders. I can't see how it's even slightly acceptable to sue a company for billions of dollars when the US still has nearly 600 coal powered stations churning out the equivalent pollution of 42,000,000,000 diesel cars. But hey, every government is hypocritical in some form or another...

Port of Vancouver supplies electrical power to all Cruise ships (that are equipped) while in port. We have multiple ships in Port per day. All electricity is hydro produced. One small step.

Unfortunately, our old cola plants were grandfathered under older emission regulations. New plants have to meet stricter ones. Which is why, in addition to fuel costs, the power companies choose to build natural gas plants for replacements.

Where government failed in regulating the old coal plants, public groups have successfully sued to have many shut down. Those actions, and the rising costs of maintaining decades out equipment, will end those remaining.

I'd move next to a nuke plant before a coal one, but those old coal plants were still legal. VW blatantly cheated on the emission tests for a decade. This didn't just let them pollute more, but also gave them an unfair advantage over their competitors, and defrauded their customers. The bulk of the damages VW will pay will be going into the buy back program to reimburse those customers.

Just because a volcano spews more pollution does NOT give license for people to spew pollution. That's like saying, "Litter on a children's ground makes it okay for me to dump my garbage here, too."

No, I'm not saying that Doug. I'm just saying that EVERY DIESEL passanger vehicle in the US combined creates the same pollution as 0.007% of the remaining Coal power stations (and those themselves are only a small part of a big problem) It's not just a drop in the ocean, but an atom of a drop, but I'm not saying it's ok to pollute, I hate pollution as much as anyone, I'm just saying people need to look at the bigger picture.

Oh. I don't score well on reading comprehension tests, Paul. ;)

VW's punishment isn't just for the extra pollution their cheater diesels caused.

They defrauded their customers by selling cars they claimed met emission regulations when they purposefully disabled such systems outside of test conditions. Many actually cared about the 'clean diesel' claim.

The cheat gave VW an unfair advantage over their competitors. Many were wondering how the VWs with SCR used so little DEF. Honda and Mazda both tried to bring a non-SCR diesel to the North American market, but gave up when they couldn't meet economy and performance targets under the strict US emission regulations. VW was only able to do so by breaking the law.

Then the length of time VW used their cheat device is a factor in the punishment.

If a coal or any other plant was caught blatantly breaking pollution regulations like VW did, there would also be a public outcry with the government coming down on them. Unfortunately, if such happened, the company would likely declare bankruptcy, and leave any clean up costs with the taxpayer.

The EPA's plan to reduce carbon emissions will result in the old plants being shut down sooner than the companies would like. They, and some states, are fighting the plan in court.

Understood and agreed! But I assume that you've been on top of the world press, in which a number reports have come from the UK, in which the UK government did tailpipe tests under real world conditions on a number of non-VW diesels, and they discovered that virtually all tested diesels (including BMW, Mercedes, GM, Mazda and others), regardless of brand or model, emitted many multiples of beyond-lab-legal levels of emissions outside of the lab. They then tested VW's gasoline (petrol) vehicles, and found a similar situation. They then tested a number of non-VW gasoline (petrol) vehicles, and found virtually all produced multiple times beyond-lab-legal levels of emissions outside of the lab, regardless of model or brand.

These reports have shown up in Canada, where I live, but then... nothing. The media does not follow up, or continue to highlight this info. Instead, they focus solely on VW.

In my mind, this does not diminish VW's wrongdoing, but it does highlight a hugely important fact that seems to be missed by the media, politicians (legislators), and most media consumers: What is the issue? The fact that VW cheated during emissions tests? This is what the media, politicians, and virtually all media consumers focus on! Or is the real problem, the "big deal" so to speak, the fact that these vehicles emit many multiples of lab-legal emissions when operating in the real world? The answer I hear most often, by far, is the focus on the cheating method. Ok, then fine: VW, pass the lab-test without cheating, and continue to sell your 40x lab-legal diesels, because they ARE clean (in the lab), and that's all that matters! This is the majority view.

I don't feel that way. I hold the view the real problem is the high, real-world emissions. And because of that view, I see VW as not being the sole culprit. I observe that exceptionally few people hold this view.

VW actually had the cleanest engines overall when tested under real world conditions. Vauxhall, who are a brand of GM actually came out worse, wonder if they published those stories and sales of GM vehicles have dropped too? Doubt it. People are too influenced by the media these days, easier to let a third party decide your opinion for you lol ;)

The non-profit that funded the West Virginia University study that caught VW's cheating, funded studies showing cars exceeding emission limits on the road years previous to catching VW. This was in comparison to EU regulated emissions. Without further evidence of cheating, all this shows is how far removed the regulation test cycles are from how the cars are actually driven in the real world. The EPA test cycles are based upon driving styles from the 1950's. Europe's and Japan's test cycles are less demanding on the car and engine than those.

In the study that caught VW, a BMW SUV was also tested. It only showed notably higher NOx emissions on one test section, and it was still lower than what the VW's emitted. The VW's had high NOx emissions over the entire test.

The test cycles should be revised, but it is possible to have cars pass the current ones, and not grossly exceed limits when driven by the consumer.

Europe's regulations for car emissions are more lax than the US's. M-B diesels were shutting off the emission controls when air temperatures were fall-like, and this is allowed under the regulation. GM Europe was taking advantage of similar loopholes in European rules.

There is no such loopholes for US models, and GM diesels use SCR to meet regulations. After VW was caught, the EPA scrutinized the other makes, and GM diesels got a pass. Presumably, so did the BMW and M-B diesels sold here.

If that were the case, and that was the norm rather than the exception, then that would be awesome!

Still, to get back to the intent of this specific forum, even though automotive pollution is non-trivial, it's just a tiny contributor when we look at the Big Picture of all sources of detrimental outputs.

Yep, but as publicly owned property, cars are possibly one of the easiest assets to enforce taxes on. Did you know 90% of N0X emissions in London are NOT from diesel cars?

They changed the road tax rules here, previously based on a cars emissions of carbon dioxide, now the government is loosing billions in tax revenue since people switched to low carbon cars. So the government's solution? Make everyone pay a flat rate of £140, in other words, take away some incentive to buy a small effecient cars, even a hybrid, and perhaps encourage people to buy something larger than they would usually, like an SUV. Let's watch emissions rise again. Talk about backwards steps...