With all the talk of "Net Zero" and "Carbon Neutral", I was curious if our family could be carbon neutral*. So I started tracking all our greenhouse gas emissions, including gas for the cars, propane for the stove&bbq, electricity (using monthly average emission factors from Yukon Energy) and flying.
Then, using the money we get back from the carbon rebate (which is currently $372/year, or $279/quarter for our family of 3) to buy carbon offsets each quarter to make us carbon neutral. And the money from the rebate was more than enough to cover the cost of buying offsets. So effectively, it cost us nothing to go carbon neutral.
Here is how 2023 looked:
Buying offsets is always the last resort. First is to reduce as much as possible. Locally, we drive very little and thankfully, our electricity in Yukon is very clean (in 2023 Yukon's grid was 90% renewable, so a bit lower than average). As you can see, our biggest part of our carbon footprint was flying as we had a number of trips outside in 2023. For context on the chart above, I included the per-capita non-mining emissions for three people. This data is from 2021 since Yukon Government lags two years in publishing the annual greenhouse gas emissions report. This is not totally a fair comparison, because it is more than just household emissions, but also includes all of Yukon's emissions, including business and government.
With respect to buying offsets, that is a bit of a wild west and totally buyer beware. I choose a Canadian company, Planetair, and selected their Planetair Canada-Trees Portfolio. I choose this offset because the offsets are in Canada (I have a bit more confidence than international offsets), it is Gold Standard certified, and it includes additional tree planting as part of it. I figure the tree planting will help create actual removals in addition to the offsets. Who knows, but one just needs to do their homework and do their best. This offset costs $30/tonne, and thus we paid $468 in offsets total. Note we got $1,116 in carbon rebates, so we are still ahead.
So my conclusion is being carbon neutral is totally do-able. I think we'll keep doing it.
*carbon neutral is different than net-zero, see https://www.sustain.life/blog/difference-between-net-zero-carbon-neutral for a good discussion of the distinction.
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