Case study 1: Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Start with a carbon budget of 3000 lbs of carbon per person per year. 1000 lbs is taken up by unavoidable supply chain stuff for food, clothes, etc. just to survive, assuming they mostly buy local food. Now we have 2000 lbs of carbon to use as we wish. Can we make this work?!?

Milwaukee is located right on the shores of Lake Michigan, which covers 22,394 square miles! Milwaukee has about 600,000 people in approximately 97 square miles. The city has been working to make itself more bike-friendly and is rated highly as being a walkable city as well. Some neighborhoods are even called “a walker’s paradise” because everything is so convenient. Milwaukee should be commended for their efforts at making alternatives to cars appealing – over 23% of residents already use public transportation, bicycles, or carpooling to get to work! Per capita income is about $33,598 versus US average of $31,786.

Milwaukee is often associated with breweries and baseball, but they also have a ton of museums, theaters, opera houses, and it is sometimes called the “city of festivals.” Winters are snowy and very cold and summers are relatively pleasant.

So how are we going to accomplish our goal in Milwaukee?
The average commute is 7.4 miles, or 15 miles round trip. Let’s assume Milwaukeeans walk about a quarter mile a day total to and from the buses and commute by bus 15 miles a day (though with less traffic we can probably assume a lot more people will start biking and walking in this inviting city). Assuming regular 5 day work weeks and 50 weeks of work a year, that equals 3750 miles of commuting by bus. Let’s add in another 25 miles a week for your shopping and socializing, so another 1300 miles.

Special considerations for bus commuting in Milwaukee: Winter cold. When it gets to -30 degrees Fahrenheit, being outside for more than a few minutes, even bundled up, can be deadly. Milwaukee already has bus shelters with glass walls to cut down on windchill – I would recommend they start their program of increasing bus ridership in about March and over the summer add front walls to each bus stop, as well as possibly some sort of coin-operated emergency heater that will blow hot air for 10 minutes. Hopefully over the summer they would be able to increase bus ridership and frequencies to 10 minutes or less all day over the city and quite frequently at night. By the time winter arrives most people would be acquainted with the bus routes and would feel confident to continue using the system. Over time the goal is to have a bus passing each bus stop every minute or two. This should keep people safe and as comfortable as possible.

We now have 5050 miles of bus commuting per person per year. At 0.25 lbs of C02 per mile, that is 1263 lbs of carbon out of 2000, leaving 737 lbs.

Milwaukee has a lot of trees already, so we’re going to focus on the heating in houses and businesses. First, we’re going to go better than the International Energy Conservation Code and require all new construction to have r-value (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-value_(insulation) ) of maybe 60 or better on exterior walls, windows, and floors. This has a significant upfront cost but saves a huge amount of both money and carbon over the life of the building. https://mtbest.net/insulated_floor.html It is probably too expensive to retrofit walls on most old buildings, but attics should be brought up to a standardized level.

We can retrofit heating relatively cheaply, as you will see further on.

Milwaukee, as with almost all communities, also will need to develop its own “foodshed” within the surrounding 100 miles or so to feed itself.

Average household in Milwaukee could use 12.9 kwh a day, on average. Milwaukee has 90 sunny days per year and 190 “days with sun” per year. This makes solar power more challenging. It has been calculated that dwellings could produce approximately 40% of their own power using solar panels. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_Wisconsin This leaves the state of Wisconsin to ramp up their green energy production – they are currently working on it, but hopefully they can get to 100% soon.

Baseline electrical usage per house:

Multiple house lights, CFL 200 wh

2 smartphones 11 wh a day to recharge

1 laptop or desktop 200 w, 60 min/day at 200 wh

1 tablet 50 wh

2 TVs (200 w each) 5 hours a day each at 2000 wh

1 game console 50 w 2 hours a day at 100 wh

Coffee maker 1500 w, or 500 wh

Microwave 1500 w, or 50 wh

Mixer 125 w or 25 wh

Garbage disposal 500 w or 50 wh

Slow cooker 200 w, or if used twice a week for eight hours, average 500 wh

Curling iron 90 w, 45 wh

Shaver 25 w, 5 wh

Hair dryer 1500 w, 250 wh

Wifi 24 w x 24 580 wh

Dryer 2000 w 1000 wh

Washing machine 500 w 300 wh

Vacuum 200 w, or 50 wh

Chest fridge 100 wh https://mtbest.net/chest_fridge.html

Chest freezer 1000 wh

Well insulated water heater 2500 w for 2 hours so 5000 wh

Baseline: 12016 watt hours or 12 kwh per day.

Air conditioning costs are minimal. Let’s say you turn on your AC for half an hour a day for 4 months out of the year, which over the year averages out to 10 minutes a day or 883 watts a day.

Total: 12.9 kwh per day.

Using all solar power, this would equal 19.5 oz of C02 per day, or 445 lbs per year. Since average household has 2.5 people, you’ll need to make your own calculations, but mathematically that is only 178 lbs per person per year, leaving 292 lbs in your carbon budget.

Meanwhile, if you’re heating with natural gas https://fyi.extension.wisc.edu/house/about-the-house/heating-and-cooling/, this website says you can expect to use 60 million btus every year. On your bill that would probably be measured in therms, so 600 therms a year at 12 lbs of carbon dioxide per therm is 7200 lbs! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycle_greenhouse-gas_emissions_of_energy_sources

We’re going to cut these numbers at least in half through retrofitting more insulation onto buildings and/or through installing masonry stoves or rocket mass heaters https://commonsensehome.com/rocket-mass-heaters/ in older houses. They are extremely efficient as they only need to be fired up once or twice a day to then radiate heat for hours, and they can be hooked up to existing gas lines or use local wood, for a much smaller than average carbon footprint. https://richsoil.com/rocket-stove-mass-heater.jsp according to this video, they only give off about 800 lbs of carbon dioxide to heat a house through a Montana winter! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dl7rIv6kXU

Let’s round up a bit and say you have a rocket mass heater that uses 1000 lbs of C02.

Total housing impact (1445) divided by 2.5 occupants is 578 lbs of C02 per year, making us over by 286 lbs. Hmm.

Let’s go over the numbers again and see what we can change. Let’s not adjust how much you use your appliances and gadgets – we’re trying to make this comfortable and as easy as possible, not deal with hardship.

Some options –

You can move closer to work. Each mile closer to your work saves you 125 lbs of carbon a year. If you shave off 10 miles you will cut 1250 lbs of carbon out of your carbon budget. (You’d be able to fly 1928 miles per year)
If you have no children in the house, enough bedrooms, and want some extra money, consider renting out your rooms. Not only will you make extra money, you will cut way down on your share of the house’s carbon footprint, as it costs the same to heat or cool a house with 1 or 4 people in it. If you get four people per house and have solar installed (or buy green energy) then your carbon footprint from the house will only be about 361 lbs instead of 578 lbs a year.
Let’s look at the commute again. If you take your bike on the bus to work and then bike home from work for six months out of the year, you’ll save 100% of 1332 miles of commuting, or 333 lbs of carbon.

These are just some ideas. People are nothing if not creative, so have fun figuring out your own solutions!