Ah, yes–it’s Spring, and and an energy geek’s thoughts turn to the consumption of fossil fuels (and emissions of CO2) from the use of lawn and garden equipment.
One might think such figures would be hard to come by, and one would be wrong. As it turns out, the Transportation Energy Data Book, brought to you via the US Dept. of Energy and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory has some quite detailed figures in Chapter 2:
So, the answer is that all equipment, including snowblowers, totaled about 2.8 billion gallons, nearly all of ot gasoline or diesel fuel, in the US in 2007. That’s a pretty hefty number in absolute terms, but it’s a piddling 0.877% of the total US oil consumption for 2007. (See Table 5.1 Petroleum Overview, 1949-2008 from the Annual Energy Review for the US’ yearly consumption.)
Oh yeah — the CO2 emissions from all that cutting and trimming are roughly 25 million metric tons.
In case you’re wondering, this actually did come to mind this morning as I was (shudder) cutting my grass. April 11 is really early to be doing lawn work in Rochester (andi was far from the first to resort to such dired action this season), but given that we’ve already had at least one day in the mid-80′s F, I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised.
Plus, I routinely get questions about this topic, so I thought I would try to pre-emptively answer them.
1% of oil usage is nothing to sneeze at. That’s 20% of the amount used for all of commercial aviation.
Lawn care is especially suited to electrification, since lawn mowers typically are run at home for less than one hour a week. Also, lawns are the largest irrigated crop in the country, which will come into sharp focus as the drought begins to bite. In Australia, where landscape irrigation is often banned, nearly every home either has a well, a rainwater tank, drought-tolerant landscaping, or all three.
We in the US wastefully spray 96% of our treated municipal water on the ground. Those days are coming to an end.
We have a little push mower for when we manage to keep up on the task and an electric one for when we don’t. Basically we kept the push mower I got during my post-school years when money was tighter. 8)
It’s not that hard to get used to the trailing cord. Some even come with a rechargeable battery, but I usually don’t suggest those to people who know nothing about batteries. Clueless owners tend to shorten a battery’s lifespan.
Pacific Northwest here. My first mowing of the season was back in February. Very unusual.
If I could afford an expert to convert my rather sizeable field of grass into a big rock garden, I’d be all over it. My hatred for all-things-landscaping aside, I’d gladly give up these ultimately harmful activities just for the environment’s sake. The only reason I perform this (uniquely American?) obessive-compulsive ritual now is to keep my neighbors’ ire at bay.
Mark: Your comment about this being a uniquely American thing made me flashback to a college prof. I had for a couple of history classes. He was a brilliant teacher the students loved, and was also the toughest grader I ever had in college. Anyway, he like to observe that there were two uniquely American things (inventions?): Lawns and rocking chairs. They both had the characteristic of requiring work and producing nothing. The lawn is self explanatory, but the rocking chair he cast in terms of Colonial America, when you would work 12 hours in the field, come into the house, drop exhausted into a chair–and you STILL had to be doing something.