At the end of 2015 almost all Nations in the world signed up to the Paris Agreement.  In effect this was an undertaking that the world will be carbon neutral by some time this century.  In simple terms this means weaning ourselves off coal, oil and natural gas.

Achieving this at a global scale is not going to be easy, but what about at the household level?

Our Energy Transition

In February 2016 I released a report entitled ‘Our Household Energy Transition:Becoming a Fossil Fuel Free Family’.  In this book, as the title suggests, I laid out my program for our family to become fossil fuel free for all our primary energy needs (ie covering both our house and our cars).  You can find details of this following my discussion on our transition progress in 2016 and 2017.

Annual Reports for 2016 & 2017

Without going into great detail in the first two years of our transition we made good progress.  In 2016 more than half of the electricity we used came from our solar PV; around 95% of our hot water came from our solar PV; more than 50% of the electricity used by our EV came from our solar PV. We had an approximate 25% reduction in our imported electricity use compared to 2015 and had about a 50% reduction in our heating energy use compared to 2015.  In 2017 some of these figures moved quite dramatically as the result of us refining our winter heating regime and installing a Tesla Powerwall 2 in September.  Over the last 3.5 months of 2017, when our Powerwall 2 was in operation, only about 3% of our electricity consumption was sourced from the grid.  We are now in the situation where we have no net household energy costs – our income from our solar PV exports more or less equals our costs for grid electricity + petrol.

You can view an embedded version (and download a copy) of the 2017 Annual Report below:

You can view an embedded version (and download a copy) of the 2016 Annual Report below:

My Original Energy Transition Book (Feb 2016)

Over the past three years my family has been on the path to carbon neutrality, and eventually, carbon freedom.  We have replaced our main car with an electric car; we have disconnected gas from our house; we now have 33 solar PV panels on our roof.  We are certainly not fossil fuel free yet, but we have come a long way.

I have documented this process and released a book which you can download from here:
Our Household Energy Transition: Becoming a Fossil Fuel Free Family (pdf 3.5MB)

The book explores the actions we have taken; why we have done what we have done; and the energy and carbon outcomes of our actions.  I also provide details on the costs.

You can view an embedded version of the book below: