At last THE SUM

Given that the car does 5,000 miles a year on average and the scooter mileage is around 500, we can finally calculate our current total emissions (hold breath)…

And the answer is: 21.8 tonnes of CO2 a year. This comes 89% from home energy and 11% from transport.

And we have to consider that:

• this doesn’t allow for the x 2.5 for our impact through society generally
• this isn’t taking the x 3 for upper atmosphere CO2
• we’re not including work travel (for good reasons)
• we don’t live in Hedgerley all the time
• it would be far higher but for Good Energy
• This doesn’t include the saving of at least 15 tonnes from our wonderful trees, which would bring our current emissions to 6.8 tonnes or 3.4 tonnes each.

Anyway it gives us our starting point. What should our year one target be?

• not straight to the 4 tonnes that would be globally fair, since (luckily for us) most people aren’t using their 2 tonnes yet.
• not just the ‘save a tonne’ option.
• we are already below the UK average (so little car use + Good Energy)

Anuradha and I discussed it and decided to aim to be at 15 tonnes by the end of year one. This would be moving towards half the UK average and make up for some of the counter-considerations above. It would also mean that, if we take the trees into account, we would be carbon neutral.

So to achieve this, we need to save 6.8 tonnes in the coming year. This will come from a whole range of changes, but the most important will be to reduce our oil consumption by around a third, i.e. using 2,000 litres less. This should be possible by not heating the pool and introducing solar hot water systems.

And by the way, what about ‘We bequeath you a planet’ as a OneWorld strapline for this campaign?