Carbon Footprint

With the goal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our community, GREC is envisioning a two- prong approach: improve energy efficiency and also promote the benefits and use of renewable energy. We believe that combining these two efforts represents the best strategy to help mitigate the effects of climate change on our planet.

To help us track the progress as we implement actions to this effect, we calculated the Community Carbon footprint, which is the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by our activities in Glen Rock and expressed as carbon dioxide (CO₂) equivalent.

Energy consumption data was collected from PSE&G. We utilized the excel template offered by Sustainable Jersey and calculated both the municipal and the community carbon footprints. The graphic representations below illustrate the borough CO₂ emissions due to electricity and natural gas usage from all residential homes, street lights, commercial, industrial and municipal buildings. In addition, emissions from transportation were estimated based on data from the North Jersey Transportation Planning Authority (NJTPA), bringing the total to 112,740 metric tons of CO₂. The pie chart illustrates that electricity generation is the largest contributor (38%), followed by natural gas (34%) and transportation (28%). The pie charts on the bottom show that for electricity the largest contributors to the Glen Rock carbon footprint are the residential (approx. 59%) and commercial sectors (approx. 32%), followed by the schools (5%) and municipal buildings (2%). For natural gas, the largest contributor is the residential sector (80%), followed by commercial (15%), and schools (4%).

The data was then expressed in a bar graph where the metric tons of CO₂ calculated for 2018 was compared with our baseline previously calculated for 2014.

The graphic representation illustrates that the CO₂ emissions in 2018 were slightly lower but very similar to the ones in 2014.