We published the 2024 Addison County Greenhouse Gas Inventory on November 1, 2024. This Update builds and extends on previous inventories for 2017 and 2020.
This data has informed our work on climate action and helped to inspire the Energy Navigator Project.
Greenhouse Gas Inventory
Summary
Estimated Addison County greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2022 were 1,075,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e). This is up 8% from an estimated 993,500 MTCO2e in 2017. The county’s population increased by only 2% over this period.
We are burning up globally and we are not making measurable progress toward our local community-wide 2030 goal of a 50% reduction below 2017 levels.
Now, we need to decrease our Addison County emissions by 578,000 tons, or over 96,000 tons per year, to reach the goal of 497,000 tons in 2030.
This inventory shows six-year trends in estimated greenhouse (heat-trapping) gas emissions in our county. As these gases continue to build up in the atmosphere, they retain heat energy and alter climate and weather patterns over time. Understanding how Addison County is contributing to these emissions can allow us to more effectively support local and regional changes to reduce our contribution to global emissions.
Climate impacts are occurring already, including increased frequency and severity of droughts, wildfires, floods (prominent in Vermont), hurricanes, heat waves, and coral reef die-offs. Forests, farms and ski areas are feeling the effect of warmer winters and longer, hotter summers. Every effective measure that we take to reduce GHG emissions is in support of greater climate justice, since the effects of climate change are borne disproportionately by people who are already disadvantaged in society; but we all benefit.
As in 2017 and 2020, the major sources of CO2e emissions in Addison County in 2022 were agriculture, building heat (natural gas, heating oil, propane, and kerosene), and transportation. Transportation fuel use during 2020 fell because of the COVID pandemic, but then recovered. Increases in GHG emissions from 2020 to 2022 came from both delivered fuels and transportation. Fortunately, looking ahead, we already know that 2023 emissions from delivered fuels are down somewhat compared to 2022.
GHG emissions from electricity in our area are very small because the carbon content of Green Mountain Power’s (GMP’s) electricity mix is now so low. As we transition our building heat from fossil fuels to electric heat pumps and our transportation from gasoline- and diesel-powered to electric vehicles, electricity consumption will go up but GHGs emitted will go down.
We also found slight increases in agricultural emissions due to an increase in dairy cow populations. We have been unable to quantify our county’s sequestration of carbon due to farming or forestry practices.
This document is intended to provide actionable information related to options for reducing GHG emissions. It is intended for audiences including: the general public; homeowners and owners of rental properties; contractors and builders (general construction, HVAC, electrical, solar); town selectboards and energy committees; the Addison County Regional Planning Commission and its Energy Committee; and persons in charge of buildings, enterprises and organizations such as schools, churches, businesses, farms, and industrial facilities.
We hope that the analyses presented here will help motivate, direct, and support necessary change in our county. As this greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory is repeated every two years going forward, we will increasingly be able to document where we have made progress and where we still have the most work to do.
Purpose of the GHG Inventory
Put simply, we need to replace every aging piece of fossil-fuel equipment (cars, trucks, buses, building heating, construction, industrial, and agricultural equipment, and so on) with its electric equivalent.
Reducing energy use through efficiency and conservation will make the needed changes more affordable and provide immediate GHG benefits but cannot be the whole solution by itself. Change will result from literally thousands of individual decisions by people in our county. Those decisions can and will be supported by large-scale policy decisions made elsewhere (like rebates or subsidies for electric vehicles or heat pumps, improvements to the electric transmission grid, or a Clean Heat Standard for buildings), but the decisions are essential at a local level. The effect of those decisions will be visible in successive editions of this inventory.