The Carbon Footprint of Houses
In-city housing can be expensive compared to suburban housing. However, a 10 kilometer distant suburban house at 1.1 liters per 10 kilometer city driving fuel consumption is at least 2.2 liters for 2-way. At 5 working days a week and at 52 weeks a year, this is 572 liters per year. However, in terms of carbon footprint this is 572 liter x 2.5 kilos of CO2 per liter or 1,430 kilos of CO2 per year per car. If car ownership is 100% for suburban dwellers and 100% of the yearly 10,000 population increase buy suburban housing and that there are 2 people per house, this is a factor of 5,000 or a total of 7,150 metric tons of CO2 per year based on the population increase alone. Thus, in a 10-year span, this is a 71,500 metric ton rate increase in CO2 emissions or a total of 3.575 million tons of released CO2.
Controlling emissions require additional costs in research, implementation and enforcement which should be proportional to the increase in CO2 emissions. Thus, increasing population results in increasing costs. In-city living drastically reduces this CO2 impact. Thus, the government will benefit by promoting in-city high rise homes over suburban homes.Thus, a Real Estate Agent like a Toronto Real Estate Agent, should emphasize in-city home sales. With a government subsidy in construction and sales, this can be a viable green solution.