Lesson 6 Infographic

Good morning everyone! Hope you enjoyed learning from the lesson this week. For this week’s assignment, for this lesson, you will be figuring out your transportation footprint and then comparing that to the national average. We will also ask you to consider, what kind of lifestyle changes you can make, within practical limits of course, to adjust your footprint if it is much higher than average. To help you along with this exercise, we will walk through an example of basically my own situation. We will use flyers to talk through it but your assignment is to present this as an infographic with a layout of your choice.

Let’s get started. First we need to note what the reference numbers are. For this assignment we will use EPA’s values as noted in this first slide. So, we have an average annual per capita emissions of 17 tons of carbon per year. Six to nine tons of that comes from our own personal automobiles. And this is approximately an average of a little less than five tons per vehicle with an average of two vehicles in a family. We will use 19 pounds of CO₂ per gallon of gasoline or 22.2 pounds per gallon of diesel depending on your vehicles, from the EPA.

Calculating our transportation carbon footprint.

• Average annual per capita carbon emissions is 17 tons of carbon/year.
• 6 to 9 tons of that comes from personal automobiles (average 4.6 tons per vehicle/yr average of two vehicles).
• We will use 19 pounds of CO₂ per gallon of gasoline and/or 22.2 pounds of CO₂ per gallon diesel, depending on your vehicle(s) [from US EPA]

So the first thing you need to do is get your personal data. Using my example, there are three vehicles in our family and they all run on gasoline. Our first vehicle averages about 20 miles a week, second vehicle goes around 100 miles a week, and the third vehicle averages about 20 miles a week. So you can see that our total mileage in a given week is about 140 and when you multiply that by 52 weeks, you get 7,280 miles per year. Now clearly this is an approximation, but we’re just trying to get a sense of magnitude of what our footprint actually is.

Getting your personal data - Ed Pinero Example

• 3 vehicles in the family, all run on gasoline
• Vehicle One: averages 20 miles/week
• Vehicle Two: averages 100 miles/week
• Vehicle Three: averages 20 miles per week
• Total miles per year = 20 + 20 + 100 x 52 = 7,280 mi/yr

If you’re not sure, or if you have a vehicle that uses something other than gasoline or diesel, you can look up online what the carbon footprint is of that type of car. Realize that all types of cars, even electric ones, have a carbon footprint. For example, hybrids do use gasoline, although it is more efficient than a normal combustion engine. For electric cars, electricity needed to charge the battery has a carbon footprint of its own. Even alternate fuel vehicles, such as liquid natural gas, ethanol, or natural gas, have a carbon footprint. All of this information is readily available online, especially from the EPA and the Department of Energy.

Calculating CO₂ Emissions

• Average mileage efficiency for all 3 SUVs = 30 mpg
• 7,280 miles at 30 mpg = 7,280/30 = 243 gallons
• 243 gallons of gasoline x 19lbs/gal = 4,807 lbs CO₂
• 4,807 lbs/2000 lbs/ton = 2.4 tons/yr

So for my calculations, we see that my average fuel efficiency for all three vehicles is about 30 miles per gallon. So, using the 7,280 miles per year at 30 miles per gallon, we go through about 243 gallons of gasoline a year. This equates to 4,800 pounds of carbon per year based on our vehicles. And, if you convert that to tons, we’re about two and a half tons of carbon per year from our three vehicles.

Figuring why, comparing to national average, can you do better?

• 2.4 tons/yr is quite low compared to the average of 6 to 9 tons/yr
• Why? - we do most of our driving around locally, I work from a home office; COVID lockdowns have reduced our driving to at least half of typical, but even normally, we would still be within the 6 to 9 ton/year average
• We could do better if we had a hybrid or electric car(s), but the cost to benefit ratio might not be worth it

So, what does that actually mean? Well, two and a half tons per year is quite low compared to the average of six to ten or six to nine tons per year for the average family. So, why is that? Well, in my case we do most of our driving locally. I work from a home office and of course, these covid lockdowns we’ve had this year have really reduced our driving to at least half of what it typically does. But that, even normally then, we still would be within the six to nine ton per year average. You can always do better, and if we had a hybrid or electric vehicle it would reduce our footprint even further. But frankly the cost to benefit ration might not be worth it, considering how low our footprint already is.

So, hopefully this exercise has helped you understand what your carbon footprint is in terms of transportation and then start getting you thinking about what you may be able to do as a result of what your footprint is relative to the national average. Hope this little exercise was helpful in helping you do the assignment. Good luck!