There's a lot of hype about CO2 these days concerning its emissions, reductions, dangers, sources of, etc. etc, and we all love to blame this tiny little molecule for destroying the world, but what actually is going on here? And I don't know about you, but whenever a building or product or business or whatever it may be says it's going to cut emissions by 'X' metric tons, I never know what that really amounts to. Is it worth a good pat on the back? Or is it like our lovely government priding themselves for saving 'X' million dollars on such-and-such when really that's just pennies in the jar of their overall budget. To us common folk, these numbers sound big and they sound important, but you have to ask yourself, how big does the number need to be to really mean anything?
Here's what it all comes down to.
Everything from factories to people to animals, forests, and oceans omit CO2. Is that bad? Well, it's kinda part of life, so not exactly. Now, I'm not here to argue about global warming and whether it's our fault or simply nature's cycle, but what the numbers are telling us is that humans and manmade things produce only a tiny fraction of what the rest the greenery and water bodies produce. The kicker is that the latter two items are able to absorb equal amounts if not more of CO2 to keep the atmosphere within check. Simply the tiny bit extra that we're adding is supposedly creating an imbalance in the system. Whatever source you check, exact numbers will vary, but the percentages are roughly the same. See here for a graph that may put this into perspective.
OK, so back to the question of CO2 reductions and what those quantities really mean. The EPA has a great online Greenhouse Gas Equivalency Calculator to give equivalents to help us understand this vague concept. For example, if we were to take a commercial building who claims to reduce emissions by 50% saving 600 metric tons annually we can see that:
600 metric tons of CO2
= annual greenhouse gas emissions from 100 cars
= annual electricity use for almost 70 homes
= annual amount sequestered from over 100 acres of forest
= burning 3 railcars worth of coal
.......... etc, etc.
Sounds like a lot, right? But in the grand scheme of things, not so much. For a rough number, let's just say that total annual manmade emissions is about 30 gigatons or 30 Billion tons. Saving 600 may not sound like a lot (only about .000002%), but if all buildings (which amount to about 40% of emissions in the US) were to cut back, the effect could be quite significant. This will be a whole other post in itself, but the 2030 Challenge has the aim for buildings to do just that, to taper down their energy consumption to eventually be carbon neutral by 2030. An aggressive goal, but completely doable considering the technology is out there to make this happen. More to come on this later....
Carbon Emissions at Street Level
A new study shows that using sustainably managed forests helps in the fights agains CO2 (another reason to use that FSC wood!)
Can Growing Trees for Fuel actually cut down on CO2 Emissions?
The US has some cutting back to do!
List of Countries by Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Here's what it all comes down to.
Everything from factories to people to animals, forests, and oceans omit CO2. Is that bad? Well, it's kinda part of life, so not exactly. Now, I'm not here to argue about global warming and whether it's our fault or simply nature's cycle, but what the numbers are telling us is that humans and manmade things produce only a tiny fraction of what the rest the greenery and water bodies produce. The kicker is that the latter two items are able to absorb equal amounts if not more of CO2 to keep the atmosphere within check. Simply the tiny bit extra that we're adding is supposedly creating an imbalance in the system. Whatever source you check, exact numbers will vary, but the percentages are roughly the same. See here for a graph that may put this into perspective.
 |
| Nature does a great job of gobbling up CO2, but it can only take so much |
OK, so back to the question of CO2 reductions and what those quantities really mean. The EPA has a great online Greenhouse Gas Equivalency Calculator to give equivalents to help us understand this vague concept. For example, if we were to take a commercial building who claims to reduce emissions by 50% saving 600 metric tons annually we can see that:
600 metric tons of CO2
= annual greenhouse gas emissions from 100 cars
= annual electricity use for almost 70 homes
= annual amount sequestered from over 100 acres of forest
= burning 3 railcars worth of coal
.......... etc, etc.
Sounds like a lot, right? But in the grand scheme of things, not so much. For a rough number, let's just say that total annual manmade emissions is about 30 gigatons or 30 Billion tons. Saving 600 may not sound like a lot (only about .000002%), but if all buildings (which amount to about 40% of emissions in the US) were to cut back, the effect could be quite significant. This will be a whole other post in itself, but the 2030 Challenge has the aim for buildings to do just that, to taper down their energy consumption to eventually be carbon neutral by 2030. An aggressive goal, but completely doable considering the technology is out there to make this happen. More to come on this later....
So just think, if buildings account for 40% of the 30billion metric tons of CO2, that's 12billion tons. Cutting this down to zero could potentially put our environment back in balance. Yes, there's a lot of variables to consider with this one, and no, ALL buildings will never be completely net zero, but hopefully this puts things a bit more into perspective.
A few more fun links:
A team or US scientists have devised a way to graph CO2 emissions on a more local level to help pinpoint major problem areas.Carbon Emissions at Street Level
A new study shows that using sustainably managed forests helps in the fights agains CO2 (another reason to use that FSC wood!)
Can Growing Trees for Fuel actually cut down on CO2 Emissions?
The US has some cutting back to do!
List of Countries by Greenhouse Gas Emissions
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