Calculating and Reducing Your Carbon Footprint

•      Delmarva’s Household CO2 Emissions Calculator

•        This is an easy way to see the carbon footprint of the fuels you consume.  It does not account for the carbon footprint of things you buy (food, autos, goods, services, etc.)  Those “other” contributions will typically be much larger than the fuels footprint – and harder to calculate. But this simple tool will get you started. 

•       Go to:

•        www.delmarva.com

•        

•                   Create an account or login

•        

•       Go to “Energy Use and Bill Data” on left hand side

•       Go to “Live Green” on lower right hand side

•       Go to  “ Get Started” on right hand side

•        

•       Enter data as requested and see the calculations in 4 areas:

•                   Profile (complete and /or correct their info)

•                   Energy and Water (they will enter your gas and electric consumption automatically)

•        For oil heat:   do a separate calculation based on 22.3 pounds CO2 per gallon fuel oil consumed

•       Transportation (do only for your autos; skip their calculations for rail and air – see note below)

•                   Waste (you will see credits for recycling)

•        

•       You will get CO2 emissions per area and total.

•        

•       For air and rail travel:

•       Do your own calculation based on  1 pound CO2 per air mile traveled and  .5 pound CO2 per rail mile traveled.  Both are per person.

•        

•       The important feature of this exercise is that you can immediately see which areas of your lifestyle contribute the most to your CO2 footprint.  Is going “green” on electricity better than buying a more efficient car?  Is your travel contributing more CO2 than your gas bill?  Now you will know and can make better decisions about reducing the CO2 emissions.

•        

How to reduce your carbon footprint based on the Delmarva results:

1. Purchase your electricity from a provider that generates it by renewable means (wind, solar, etc.).  This is remarkably easy to do. And Julie and I have done this

1. Here is a list of Certified Electric Service Providers ( and I know of others not on this list)
2. http://depsc.delaware.gov/electric/elecsupplierinfo.pdf

2. Purchase offsets from reliable companies and organizations (I can help).  This also is very easy to do. And Julie and I do this. What’s an offset?  In the simplest example: buy a tree that captures CO2 to offset your lawn mower emissions.  But there are more effective and creative ways.

For help: Mike Rominger at 302-477-1133 or M.Rominger@gmail.com