Carbon Emissions

To arrive at the carbon emissions (as CO2) for energy consumed in the user’s house, we multiply the annual energy for each fuel type by the emissions factor for the respective fuel:

emissions = sum (site energy[resource] * carbon_factor[resource])

     where: resource = electric, natural gas, fuel oil, lpg

Table 33 presents the emissions factors for fossil fuels. Natural gas and fuel oil emission factors are derived from U.S. DOE (1994), while the LPG emission factor is from U.S. DOE (1996).

Table 33. Direct Carbon Emissions (as CO2) from Residential Fuel Combustion

Table 34 contains the state level emissions factors for electricity.

The electricity emissions factors are from U.S. EPA’s eGRID (Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database), which contains emissions and resource mix data for virtually every power plant and company that generates electricity in the United States (US EPA 2009).

Table 34. State Level Electricity Carbon Emissions Factors (as CO2)