Triangle Sustainability Blog

In a recent post, I reviewed some research that shows that our current atmospheric carbon concentrations are now at a level not seen for around 15 million years. That’s bad news.

But there’s some good news, too. A recent report from the International Energy Agency spells out a strategy for stabilizing carbon atmospheric concentrations, perhaps in more detail than has been specified before.

For the IEA, keeping carbon concentrations at our below 450 ppm is the key, since that’s the level they believe will minimize the effects of global warming. Hence they call getting to that goal the “450 scenario.”

Achieving the 450 scenario, according to the IEA, requires pursuing a variety of different carbon abatement measures. These measures include pursuing greater energy efficiencies, renewable energy, biofuels, nuclear power and carbon capture and storage (see figure).

World energy-related CO2 emissions abatement (source: IEA)

Based on the IEA’s handy graph and table, we can see that they believe end-use energy efficiency to be the greatest slice of the carbon-abatement pie. And within that category fall lots of measures that we each can take to boost our personal energy efficiency – better insulation, building sealing, replacing incandescent light bulbs, driving a car with better mileage, etc.

This serves as a nice reminder that it’s easy for each of us to take energy-savings steps today, rather than waiting for various forms of renewable energy to become more affordable. So what are you going to do to boost your own efficiency?

I’ve previously speculated about some ways to calculate a carbon footprint (see post). My methods were pretty basic, but I hope they at least gave some ideas of how we can start tabulating or carbon costs.

While other carbon calculators do exist – such as Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth calculator – they only provide the high level information about what all goes into our carbon footprints – both individually and nationally.

For those who would like to take a more serious look at what comprises your carbon emissions, I highly recommend the book “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air” by David MacKay.

MacKay, a Physics professor at the University of Cambridge, goes through a thorough investigation of all the direct and indirect carbon emissions that we’re each responsible for. He then tabulates those emissions against theoretical renewable energy alternatives. And I do mean theoretical – MacKay envisions such extreme scenarios as putting wind mills on almost every available acre in the UK or solar panels on every home. He focuses on what’s possible if we all used about as much renewable energy as we could.

The downside is that MacKay lives in Britain, and so his numbers are focused only on what the UK could do and don’t take into account U.S. consumption habits or potential renewable resources. But his book still provides a fantastic overview of the challenge behind actually going to a completely renewable-based energy supply, and he does it in a fun and very readable way for non-technical folks.

Best of all, MacKay gives his book away online for free, so you can download it in chapters or all at once and start reading today.