fairbanks emissions

Fairbanks got a report card last week in the form of a borough-wide greenhouse gas emissions inventory. How'd we do? Depends on how you look at it. Borough residents produced the equivalent of about 39 metric tons (about 85,000 pounds) of carbon dioxide per person per year (excluding any emissions from airplanes), which is quite a bit higher than the national average of 24 metric tons. But if you factor in the need for space heating up here, which overwhelms the need for heating and cooling in the Lower 48, we actually do more with less CO2, so to speak. In the big picture, of course, 85,000 pounds per person is completely unsustainable, but that's another story.
The inventory was done by the University of Alaska Fairbanks' energy research center, the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, under the direction of Gwen Holdmann, the woman behind many of the energy projects at Chena Hot Springs. It serves a few purposes. First, it completes the first step in the borough's efforts to reduce its emissions through the ICLEI Cities for Climate Protection program. Second, it provides a baseline against which to evaluate the coal-to-liquids project some are pushing hard for the Fairbanks area. Proponents have promised to only support the project if it would reduce emissions overall.
The state finished its own inventory last year.
I won't bore you with too many details from the Fairbanks inventory, but here are a few that stood out to me.
-Each resident is responsible for about 500 gallons of heating fuel per year just for residential heating and 3,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity
-Coal-fired generation is a killer
-The Flint Hills refinery in North Pole, which burns mostly light straight run gasoline, is responsible for nearly 1/10th of the borough's emissions
-Lots of people drive pickups (there's about 1 registered pickup for every 2 cars)
-Eielson Air Force Base blows through about 45 million gallons of jet fuel every year, which produces more CO2 than all other non-aviation transportation in the borough
The full report is available at the ACEP Web site. Anchorage, Juneau, Kodiak, and Homer have also teamed up with ICLEI, so presumably they've done them, too.
Here's a shot of the Golden Heart City from the Chena River.