You may think that switching the lights off and lowering the heating isn’t doing much for environmental wellness, but you may be having a bigger impact on the planet’s wellbeing than you thought. This is according to a new study appearing in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology, which found that energy conservation in a small number of households could go a long way to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Led by Dominik Saner, the researchers measured differences in energy demands at the household level, examining more than 3,000 households in a Swiss town. The results of the study, which received funding from the Competence Centre for Energy & Mobility and Swisselectric Research, revealed that just 21% of the households accounted for almost 50% of greenhouse gas emissions. These few families had a disproportionately large environmental footprint due to large living spaces (which use more energy for heating, lighting and cooling) and long commutes in private vehicles.
The researchers pointed out that the energy you use to power your home and to travel accounts for more than 70% of emissions of carbon dioxide. This is the main greenhouse gas involved in global climate change, but policymakers and environmentalists have focused largely on the supply side to deal with the problem; turning to electric power plants, heating systems and cars that release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, Saner and his team decided to take a close look at how energy consumption for housing and land-based mobility at the household level impacts greenhouse gas emissions.
Several atmospheric gases are responsible for the greenhouse effect, including water vapour, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane and nitrous oxide. However, while methane has roughly 21 times the heat-trapping ability of carbon dioxide – according to the EPA – CO2 is frequently cited as the principal driver of global warming because we have burned so many fossil fuels like coal and oil that we have released unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1700s. Still, the researchers concluded that if the emissions of the few disproportionate families ‘could be halved, the total emissions of the community would be reduced by 25%.’ So it seems that you still have your part to play in reducing carbon emissions.
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