Home Emissions

Home Electric

The Easy Way

Use CFcalc to estimate your kWh usage per year and kg CO2 emissions per year.

The More Accurate Way

Calculating emissions from your home is straightforward for electricity if you are a home owner or someone that pays your own electric utility bill. Most utilities have an online portal where you can access all the past utility bills which list the kWh per month.

Simply add up the total kWh per month over the past 12 months and you will get your total annual electricity consumption. This number is likely to be between 2000 and 30,000 kWh/year. Mine is 4631 kWh/year

To get the emissions per day simply divide the annual total by 365 days per year.

Example: 4631 kWh/year / 365 = 12.68 kWh per day

To get the carbon emissions from this electricity, multiply the kWh by 0.346 kg CO2/kWh*. (For those of you questioning the 0.346 factor: this is a national average. It is possible to be more accurate but also more complicated so for the purposes of Climate Responsible, we are defaulting to simplification.)

Example: 12.68 kWh/day x 0.346 kg CO2/kWH = 4.38 kg per day.

To get your personal emissions divide this kg/day by the number of people living in the house. I am living in a home with my wife so I will divide by 2 to get the electrical consumption contribution to my carbon footprint.

Example: 4.38 kg/day/household / 2 people per household = 2.2 kg CO2per day

Home Natural Gas

The Easy Way

Use CFcalc to estimate your kWh usage per year and kg CO2 emissions per year. Divide these annual emissions by 365 to get emissions per day.

The More Accurate Way

Calculating emissions from natural gas requires knowledge of the therms of natural gas used in a year. Your natural gas utility provides the number of therms used on the monthly electricity bill and these bills can be accessed on the utilities online portal. Adding all the monthly therms for the past 12 months from your billing statements gives the annual therms used per year. Multiply the therms/year by 5.3 kg CO2/therm to get the CO2 kg emissions per year from your natural gas consumption.

Example: My household uses 370 therms per year and I live with my wife and no kids.

370 therms per year / 365 days/year x 5.3 kg CO2/therm = 5.37 kg CO2 per day for my home.

To get my portion of the emissions I divide by the number of people in my home

5.37 kgCO2/day per house / 2 people/house = 2.68 kg CO2 /day

Source for kg CO2 factors. EPA Greenhouse Gas Emissions Equivalency Calculator