In July I took a 2,505-kilometre road trip to the Southern Gulf Islands and Vancouver Island.
I wanted to offset the carbon produced by the pickup truck we used for the trip, so I visited Natural Resources Canada’s fuel consumption page (fcr-ccc.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/en) to figure out the grams of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per km generated by that make and model of truck travelling at highway speeds.
Shocker No. 1: This not-that-long of a trip generated 816 kg of CO2e.
Shocker No. 2: Despite the big number (that’s about the weight of an adult female giraffe), the cost to offset these emissions was just $25.82. The offset money goes into Quality Assurance Standard (qasaudit.com) certified pollution-reducing projects like run of river hydro power.
We spent about $400 on gas during the trip, so this wasn’t much of an extra cost.
The best choice for a non-polluting road trip is an EV. For those of us who drive internal combustion engine cars, I hope it becomes more common and expected that when we take vacations, we cough up the minor cost to offset the carbon we produce.
Greg Amos
Nelson