This is the first year I'm trying to regularly commute to work. I can do this two or three times a week. I'm a school teacher and my schedule varies. 50% of the time, I have no first period class, which gives me time to have breakfast with my family (a priority, or I'd try to commute every day) and make my 12 mile ride to school with enough time left over to shower and get to my class by second period.

On other days, I drive my car (there's no public transportation there), a 1999 Toyota Carolla that gets 24 mpg in the city (which is probably optimistic). I got to wondering how much carbon and oil I'm not expelling/consuming with each trip. I think I'll keep track of it sort of like my commuting mileage. I'm planning to use this calculator:

https://www.bankserv.com/greenbanking/calculator2.html

I'll just enter my miles and mileage, but rather than entering what I have driven in my car, I'll enter what I haven't driven because I've covered the miles on my bike. I'll post them here using the same procedure as the mileage thread. Anyone who wants to join me and update the list is welcome to.

Name Miles Commuted Carbon Not Emitted Oil Not Used

ultimattfrisbee 52 42 lbs. .11 barrels

Starting bicycle commuting in July and missed only a handful of days.

Wonderful. Imagine how much pollution isn't in the air because of you!

I started commuting in April/May. Before I fueled up my truck once a week with about 20-25 gallons of gas. Now I do that once every 4 of 5 weeks. I would say I'm saving 70-80 gallons a month.

If you are, you've saved, personally, 4.25 barrels of oil and more than 1600 lbs. of carbon in the atmosphere. Good job, man!

who cares about carbon


Apparently Im saving on average $1400 a year in gas by commuting fully by bicycle

Just for 2011, I saved 17 barrels of oil, didn't put 4600 miles on my truck and didn't emit 3.3 tons of CO2 emissions. For the 30+ years I've been regularly commuting, I've saved 280 barrels of oil, 91000 miles and 53 tons of CO2 emissions.

A lot of people care about carbon (either forks and frames or emissions), but if you don't, I'm happy you're saving money.

A couple issues with the calculator being used:
1) it's calculating the pounds of carbon dioxide released, not just carbon. More than two thirds of the weight are the oxygen atoms that combine with the carbon;
2) the determination of barrels of oil saved is based on their est. that each barrel when refined yields a little under 20 gallons of gasoline. Technically probably about right with the way refineries operate currently, but misleading since that same barrel of oil is also producing various other hydrocarbon products - heating oil, diesel, jet fuel, waxes, greases, etc. Just based on economics the 20 gal. of gas per barrel doesn't make sense since the price of a barrel of oil is about $100 and if all the refineries got out of it were 20 gallons of gas that they sell for about $70 (incl. tax of about $8) then they'd quickly go broke. So just because demand for gasoline goes down by 20 gallons does not mean that we need one less barrel of oil. It would only save about half that given all the other products that come from crude oil.

Well-taken. Perhaps I need a better calculator.

Or none at all. Either way, I'll be riding, and either way, it's good for a lot of things and bad for almost nothing. Thanks for the input.

And I should have been more precise. The calculator claims to calculate pounds of greenhouse gases, not carbon, and so that's my misstatement. As for the barrels of oil, what you say makes sense.

In terms of 'carbon' released, it is generally understood that 'carbon' is short hand for carbon dioxide when referring to the burning of hydrocarbon fuels. Since carbon dioxide is the important byproduct of the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels, it is germane to talk about the carbon dioxide released and not just the 'carbon' within that molecule.

Each gallon (US) of gasoline does releases 19.4 lb of carbon dioxide.

The calculator seems geared to people who have cars or trucks. I don't have either, so guessing I save a bunch of oil somehow... unless I could walk to work.

But remember that you are also burning fossil fuel if you own a car and leave it parked in the driveway. I've read that just the manufacture alone consumes the same energy as driving the vehicle 55,000 miles.

Where is my carbon credit ?

By being car free I get these numbers...

- 500 gallons of fuel
- 25 barrels of oil
- 9700 pounds of CO2
+ $1500.00

I think the calculator is geared toward people who own cars and trucks, like me. It's clear that not owning/driving a car is better for the environment and your wallet than owning one, but I think this is a case of not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. If a driver of a car wants to drive it less, he should be encouraged for doing so rather than chided for driving it at all.

i wonder how far you have to ride your bike to recover the energy cost of manufacture?

The gas in my car is about 2 years old now and I still have 1/4 tank left, that's all I can tell you for sure. Tangentially, the solar-panel battery charger seems to work

Yes I agree. It's much better to drive that car as little as possible... especially when you look at the health benefits and, of course, the carbon credits.

What I'm trying to point out is the syndrome I see some car owners getting into. Prius owners are famous for this. They become smarmy about their energy efficient purchase when, in fact, there's a lot of room for improvement and little reason to get too smarmy.

And lest you think I'm getting all smarmy on you, I should point out that my life has a number of such inconsistencies. I don't have a car in my driveway, but I take lengthy airplane trips... far worse in terms of energy consumption than owning a car.

I guess the energy efficiency aspect is going to be a work in progress for all of us.

The calculator that ultimattfrisbee links do is valid for oil usage and amount saved. Refineries are optimized to produce gasoline and, more importantly, transportation fuels from each barrel of oil. Depending on the source of the oil, the gasoline fraction can vary from 5% to around 30%, so to get to nearly 50% production, they have to reform other fractions. If there were less demand for gasoline, the amount of oil that would need to be refined to make gasoline could be decreased. The streams of the refinery that are currently diverted to reform into gasoline could be reformed into other products. If our demand for gasoline were more in line with the actual amount of the gasoline fraction in oil, we wouldn't need to refine as much oil and could reduce our usage or divert the oil to better, more high value usages.

Dad, i missed my train and ran to school. It saved me 10$!

You idiot, why didn't you miss the bus, it would have saved you 15$!

Did you calculate the Uranium, Coal or Natural Gas to run the power plant,
to make the electricity to run the computer to write about this?

NB: U235 doesn't grow on trees , lots of fuel and power to make the metal
to go in the fuel rods.
Plus make and transport and pour concrete to build the plant, etc.


Children, and their habits, are part of the parents' carbon foot print too, ..

Perhaps you could calculate it for us and then compare the energy required to build and run a computer to the same for an automobile.

Are they really as smarmy as so many keep saying or is that a myth that the SUV drivers and the climate change deniers are perpetrating on us to assuage their guilty feelings?

A big problem is that huge strides in fuel efficiency innovation have been cancelled out by bigger cars.

No wonder those yellow berries haven't produced a fission reaction. Should have known better than to buy that Uranium Tree!

Wrong forum. Try the Road Forum. They are doing more carbon sequestration than all the rest of the sub-forums combined.