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It can be useful to look at your household's greenhouse gas emissions (although your ecological footprint is a more comprehensive measure of your impact on the environment).
Here's what the average Australian household emits: - Transport 34%
- Water heating 16%
- Electronic/other appliances 15%
- Home heating and cooling 11%
- Fridge/freezer 9%
- Wastes (landfill) 5%
- Lights 5%
- Cooking 3%
- Clothes wash/dry and dishwashing 2%
Source: Global Warming - Cool It! Australian Greenhouse Office, 2003 An alternative, more up to date source of data on the Australian household carbon footprint comes from Dr David Mills of the Qld Department of the Environment and Resource Management (a 2009 presentation) as follows: - Houshold construction and renovations 11.8%
- Purchased goods and services 29.4%
- Food 28.3%
- Transport 10.5%
- Electricity 20%
The above doesn't include waste as a separate category though. Online carbon calculators for homes / households and businesses After testing around 10 online Australian tools we preferred www.carbonneutral.com.au Did you know.... An evaluation of David Gershon's Low Carbon Diet program has shown that transport emissions are the hardest to minimise - scary given that oil is a finite resource and new technologies are unlikely to offer a total substitute for oil. The largest growth in greenhouse gas emissions has come from power generation and road transport - refer: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-ts.pdf
At the international level A great source of information about the various forms of emissions can be found via the United Nations' 2009 report called "The State of Food and Agriculture" at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0680e/i0680e.pdf For example, it explores how livestock, for example, contributes to greenhouse gas emissions (page 64).
The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report presents agreed levels of overall anthropogenic GHG emissions for defined categories representing economic sectors (Barker et al., 2007). The IPPC suggests that these figures should be seen as indicative. In 2004, the IPCC's Working Group III, reported that energy supply accounted for about 26% of GHG emissions, industry 19%, gases released from land-use change and forestry 17%, agriculture 14%, transport 13%, residential, commercial and service sectors 8% and waste 3% - refer page 20 at http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg3/ar4-wg3-ts.pdf The report also looks at how and to what extent the emissions in each of these sectors could be reduced.
The IPCC's 2007 synthesis report also depicts / graphs greenhouse gas emissions by sector on page 36. The report can be found at: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr.pdf
For tips on reducing your emissions and/or ecological footprint , see our Practical Tips section and Useful Links . At th international level, policy information, practice tips and resources for reducing emissions across sectors can be found at the UN's Environment Programme website at: http://www.unep.org/climatechange/ |
