Carbon Footprint of all forms of heat

Natural Gas

If someone with a better understanding than me, can help with figuring out what the final number for CO2e would be, per household heated with natural gas in Montana (including combustion and leaks) with citations, that would be super appreciated. I've found some links here that could help:

This site has a fantastic graph that shows industrial carbon dioxide emissions from natural gas for Montana through the years.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMISSCO2TOTVICNGMTA

Good resource pages: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/natural-gas-and-petroleum-systems
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/natural-gas-and-petroleum-systems-ghg-inventory-additional-information-1990-2020-ghg

This is a helpful document with page 26 having a graph (figure 6) of Montana Energy CO2 emission by fossil fuel type 2020-2050...And page 22 has a graph (figure 2) showing Montana CO2 Emissions from Fossil Fuel Consumption (2005-2020)
https://deq.mt.gov/files/DEQAdmin/Climate/2020-09-09_MontanaClimateSolutions_Final.pdf

This might be helpful also:
https://www.eia.gov/state/print.php?sid=MT

I did find at https://missoulacurrent.com/carbon-inventory-missoula/

Residential energy use also contributed 23% of all emissions within the study area, or more than 263,000 metric tons of carbon. Of that energy, around 50.4% came from electrical use and 49.5% from natural gas.

So 49.5% is 130,185 metric tons from natural gas/residential use in Missoula for 2019?

The figures come from here: https://townsquare.media/site/1098/files/2022/03/Greenouse-Gas-inventory.pdf (page 7) and I think it works out that this is based on 31,100 customers (or households?)

So does that mean an average of 4.18 metric tons per household in 2019?

This sounds like a great project! I look forward to seeing how it progresses.

Have you considered adding an indication of whether the heat source is in-cycle or not? What I mean by this is whether the carbon dioxide released by the fuel source will be reabsorbed in a similar fashion.

Wood, for example, is in-cycle and any carbon dioxide released will eventually be sequestered by more trees as they grow. This assumes that trees are replanted at the same rate that they are felled, or managed via coppicing or pollarding. Natural gas, oil and fossil fuels are out of cycle and won't be replenished for many millennia. Methane can be both in-cycle or out-of-cycle, depending how it is produced (gathered from anaerobic digestion of food waste or animal slurry it is in-cycle).

It might be a deviation from the project you had in mind - in which case please ignore me! I just thought it might be an interesting addition to note.

It might be that burning diesel in a heater (10.9kg/l, or about 50kg/gallon) emits less CO2 than heating the space with wood *but* the CO2 from the wood will be reabsorbed far sooner, essentially offsetting that emission over time. I try and do my own, informal carbon accounting with such things in mind.

Best of luck with this!

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the total annual CO2 emissions per household heated with natural gas in Montana is estimated to be 8,674 metric tons of CO2. This includes emissions from natural gas combustion at point of use, emissions from natural gas leaks at point of use, and emissions from natural gas combustion and transmission losses in the natural gas distribution grid. Sources:

1. U.S. Energy Information Administration, “Annual State-Level Carbon Dioxide Emissions Coefficients by Fuel Type,” https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/

2. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, “Estimating Air Emissions from Residential Natural Gas Use” https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2016-07/documents/estimating_air_emissions_residential_gas_use.pdf

8,674 metric tons of CO2.

Should the comma be a decimal point?

paul wheaton wrote:

8,674 metric tons of CO2.

Should the comma be a decimal point?

Copy paste.  Looking closer I think this is a misinterpretation.  

The data shows per state, or per fuel source, or per capita, but not a combination of the above.  So doing some numbers:


According to https://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/
in 2020, Montana emitted 4,800,000 metric tons of CO2 by way of natural gas.

According to https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/MT
here were about 436,481 households.

So, would it make sense to divide total emissions by household number?

Because that would indicate 10.997 metric tons of CO2 emissions per household per year.

Except, I don't believe that differentiates between natural gas for heating vs natural gas for cooking.  Maybe that's a moot point.

According to https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/MT
here were about 436,481 households.

How many households were using natural gas heat?

apparently 60% of montana homes use natural gas

https://permies.com/wiki/carbon-footprint-heat#353734

working in the 60% ....

natural gas:   18.3 tons

So 60% of 436481 is 261,888.6
4.8 mil / 261,888.6
18.3284 metric tons

Beau,

Can you figure out the numbers for propane?

What is the total number of CO2 emissions from propane heat per household in montana.  Including combustion and leaks, at point of use as well as in the grid.  Include sources.

The total number of CO2 emissions from propane heat per household in Montana is not available as a single figure. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the total amount of CO2 emissions from residential propane use in Montana in 2018 was 1,547,000 metric tons. This includes combustion and leaks from point of use as well as in the grid.

Sources:

U.S. Energy Information Administration. (2020). State Energy Data System (SEDS). Retrieved from https://www.eia.gov/state/seds/

how many montana households use propane as their primary heat source? including sources

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a total of 66,046 Montana households used propane as their primary energy source for heating in 2019.
https://deq.mt.gov/Energy

Specific url no longer valid, and not indexed at archive.org.

But those numbers seem to indicate:
1,547,000 metric tons CO2e per househould / 66,046 households
23.4230688 metric tons per household

I am marking this row as now done - although I am glad to consider changes if anybody has thoughts!

This number crunching sure shows how good rocket mass heaters can be for reducing our carbon footprint. Paul has put together 2 podcasts recently that touch on these numbers in podcast 641 and podcast 642.