At UC Berkeley, a tool that measures your carbon impact

Music Sumi Das: In a study by UC Berkeley, the typical US household dumps 50 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. That's the equivalent of burning 120 barrels of oil during the same period. Chris Jones: The vehicles that we drive, the amount of driving that we have to do, our food choices, the energy for our homes, the goods and services that we purchase, all of this leads to emission of greenhouse gases. Sumi Das: Emissions that the study suggests we should all aim to reduce by 20%. We met up with Chris Jones, a researcher with Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab to find out how. He's co-developed a calculator to measure our carbon impact and how we compare to others around us. Chris Jones: These tools allow you to quickly estimate carbon footprint of somebody like you, a household like you that lives in the same location that has the same income and same household size. And then you can quickly go through the tool, figure out your own carbon footprint. Sumi Das: We profiled a male in his forties, living in San Francisco with a family of five and making $80,000 a year. We entered in the transportation he uses, how he consumes energy, what his family eats, even what items he buys. After filling out the online questionnaire, the tool calculates his carbon footprint and how he compares to similar households in his area and in the U.S. Chris Jones: This household did pretty well. We're 15% lower than typical households like us. Transportation, we did really well. We get a nice smiley face for that. We only drive two vehicles instead of three. Our housing, not so good here, we have some room for improvement in reducing emissions from our home energy use. And our shopping and our diet, well, we did okay there. Sumi Das: The tool then offers recommendations on how to take action and change behavior. For example, maybe our family could carpool to work or try out a low carbon diet. Now, what if our family wanted to move from California to Colorado? Chris Jones: Here in California, electricity is produced with relatively clean sources of fuel that if our family moves to say, Colorado, where the energy is produced with coal, we can see how much impact that would make on our carbon footprint. Sumi Das: In the future with some more funding, Jones plans to open up the calculator to other countries so US citizens can compare their carbon footprint against individuals in other regions. Chris Jones: There is good research comparing carbon footprints of different countries. What we don't have is at the individual level, at the household level, the community level. Sumi Das: For Smart Planet, I'm Sumi Das.

Music

==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====