What has a bigger climate impact in a high-latitude city?

I live in a higher-latitude city. We have cold winters with temperatures dropping to below freezing for several months with days when the temperature falls below -40 (which happens to be the point when Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature scales meet). We can also have warm summers with temperatures rising above +30 C (86 F). This means that we have central heating for the winters and more and more people are getting some sort of air conditioning. Additionally, most houses use natural gas for heating and electricity derived from fossil fuels. As a result, the greenhouse gas emissions associated with heating and cooling homes are significant. But how significant?

Welegedara and Agrawal (2024) compared greenhouse gas emissions from dwellings and personal transportation in Edmonton, which is where I live. Parts of the results are not surprising. The size of the home and higher neighbourhood income levels are both associated with increases in household greenhouse gas emissions (HEGHG). On the other hand, if a household is struggling to afford homeownership they tend to emit lower HEGHGs. That makes sense.

What is really interesting, though, is that the average annual per capita greenhouse gas emissions from dwellings are 45% higher than those from personal transportation. This highlights how important it is to get homeowners and building owners involved in changing how we get around AND in improving energy efficiency and reducing energy use in our homes.

I know from working with students in the sustainability classes I teach that many of them look at personal vehicles and how they get around. This makes sense. Energy efficiency at home is often something that seems harder in many ways. We jump to things like installing solar panels, which many university students and many others don’t have the capacity to do. But there are lots of other options around the home that can make a difference, like keeping the thermostat a little lower in the winter and wearing a sweater. Of, if you do have in-house cooling, keeping the temperature a touch higher in the summer. Using natural cooling like keeping curtains closed, opening windows, even planting trees to create shade are also good options. Thinking about how you use electricity and taking actions like keeping unnecessary lights turned off and using power bars to shut power off to things not in use to avoid phantom power may seem like small actions, but seeing how much higher emissions are from homes makes these actions seem a lot more important.

If you are in Edmonton, here are the financial incentives the city offers at the moment, which includes a program that will be launching this summer, but two of the four programs are listed as fully subscribed. Regardless of where you are, but especially if you are in a high-altitude city, here are some other resources from the City about changing habits and changing homes that vary in impact, costs, and effort.