Quantifying carbon footprint reduction opportunities for U.S. households and communities.

Carbon management is of increasing interest to individuals, households, and communities. In order to effectively assess and manage their climate impacts, individuals need information on the financial and greenhouse gas benefits of effective mitigation opportunities. We use consumption-based life cycle accounting techniques to quantify the carbon footprints of typical U.S. households in 28 cities for 6 household sizes and 12 income brackets. The model includes emissions embodied in transportation, energy, water, waste, food, goods, and services. We further quantify greenhouse gas and financial savings from 13 potential mitigation actions across all household types. The model suggests that the size and composition of carbon footprints vary dramatically between geographic regions and within regions based on basic demographic characteristics. Despite these differences, large cash-positive carbon footprint reductions are evident across all household types and locations; however, realizing this potential may require tailoring policies and programs to different population segments with very different carbon footprint profiles. The results of this model have been incorporated into an open access online carbon footprint management tool designed to enable behavior change at the household level through personalized feedback.

[1]  P. Stern.  What psychology knows about energy conservation. , 1992 .

[2]  Steven Blanchard.  Life Cycle Analysis of a Residential Home in Michigan , 1998 .

[3]  Manfred Lenzen,et al.  Energy and greenhouse gas cost of living for Australia during 1993/94 , 1998 .

[4]  D. McKenzie‐Mohr,et al.  Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing , 1999 .

[5]  Exploring Sustainable Consumption: Environmental Policy and the Social Sciences , 2001 .

[6]  Manfred Lenzen,et al.  Effects of Household Consumption Patterns on CO2 Requirements , 2001 .

[7]  Arnold Tukker,et al.  The Fourth Generation: New Strategies Call for New Eco-Indicators , 2001 .

[8]  R. N. Elliott,et al.  American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy , 2002 .

[9]  S. Pacca,et al.  Greenhouse gas emissions from building and operating electric power plants in the Upper Colorado River Basin. , 2002, Environmental science & technology.

[10]  Chris Hendrickson,et al.  Economic Input-output Life-cycle Assessment of U.S. Residential Buildings , 2002 .

[11]  K. Blok,et al.  The direct and indirect energy requirement of households in the European Union , 2003 .

[12]  Bruce Lippke,et al.  CORRIM: Life-Cycle Environmental Performance of Renewable Building Materials , 2004 .

[13]  Robert Ries,et al.  LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS , 2005 .

[14]  R. Zmeureanu,et al.  Energy and Emission Estimator: A Prototype Tool for Designing Canadian Houses , 2005 .

[15]  Sangwon Suh,et al.  Developing a sectoral environmental database for input-output analysis: the comprehensive environmental data archive of the US , 2005 .

[16]  Arpad Horvath,et al.  Environmental Assessment of Freight Transportation in the U.S. (11 pp) , 2006 .

[17]  W. Schmidt.  Life Cycle Tools within Ford of Europe's Product Sustainability Index. Case Study Ford S-MAX & Ford Galaxy (8 pp) , 2006 .

[18]  Book Review: "The Ecological Economics of Consumption", Lucia A. Reisch and Inge Røpke (Eds.) , 2006 .

[19]  The Ecological Economics of Consumption, edited by Lucia Reisch and Inge Röpke , 2006 .

[20]  Chris Hendrickson,et al.  Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Goods and Services: An Input-Output Approach , 2006 .

[21]  Rüdiger Hoffmann,et al.  Application of Life Cycle Assessment for the Environmental Certificate of the Mercedes-Benz S-Class (7 pp) , 2006 .

[22]  Matthias Fripp,et al.  Trading away damage: Quantifying environmental leakage through consumption-based, life-cycle analysis , 2007 .

[23]  A. Ramaswami,et al.  A demand-centered, hybrid life-cycle methodology for city-scale greenhouse gas inventories. , 2008, Environmental science & technology.

[24]  Matthew E. Kahn,et al.  The Greenness of Cities: Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Urban Development , 2008 .

[25]  H. S. Matthews,et al.  The importance of carbon footprint estimation boundaries. , 2008, Environmental science & technology.

[26]  A. Kollmuss,et al.  Making Sense of the Voluntary Carbon Market: A Comparison of Carbon Offset Standards. , 2008 .

[27]  H. S. Matthews,et al.  Food-miles and the relative climate impacts of food choices in the United States. , 2008, Environmental science & technology.

[28]  Jonathan M. Gilligan,et al.  Individual Carbon Emissions: The Low-Hanging Fruit , 2008 .

[29]  G. Peters.  From production-based to consumption-based national emission inventories , 2008 .

[30]  H. S. Matthews,et al.  Quantifying the global and distributional aspects of American household carbon footprint , 2008 .

[31]  F. Southworth,et al.  Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America , 2008 .

[32]  A. Horvath,et al.  Environmental assessment of passenger transportation should include infrastructure and supply chains , 2009 .

[33]  Aumnad Phdungsilp,et al.  Greenhouse gas emissions from global cities. , 2009, Environmental science & technology.

[34]  G. T. Gardner,et al.  Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce US carbon emissions , 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[35]  R. Neff,et al.  Measurement and communication of greenhouse gas emissions from U.S. food consumption via carbon calculators , 2009 .

[36]  E. Hertwich,et al.  Carbon footprint of nations: a global, trade-linked analysis. , 2009, Environmental science & technology.

[37]  S. Suh.  Handbook of input-output economics in industrial ecology , 2009 .

[38]  O. Mont,et al.  The Impacts of Household Consumption and Options for Change , 2010 .