We’ve been doing some data-crunching on use of our carbon calculators and our sales figures. With over 500,000 footprints calculated, we found plenty of interesting nuggets to bundle together as the official “Terrapass Carbon Footprint Awareness Survey.” Some highlights:
Out of over 2,300 different vehicles searched for in the road calculator, the Toyota Prius was the most popular. It accounted for almost 4% of all road searches. In total, hybrids represented about 7% of all 2007 road searches, about ten times the share of hybrids among U.S. passenger cars. (According to Green Car Congress, nearly one million hybrids have been sold in the US, making hybrids about .7 % of the U.S. car fleet.)
New York City was the city with the most households to offset their home energy use, followed by San Francisco. When figures are adjusted to account for city size, however, a different picture emerges. On a per capita basis, Chapel Hill, N.C. had the highest home offset rate of any city. Four other college towns also made the top ten per capita: Santa Monica (#2), Palo Alto (#3), Berkeley (#4), and Pasadena (#7).
Denver was the most popular destination for green-minded fliers who offset their plane flights. Are skiers and snowboarders trying to protect their snow from climate change? The single most frequently offset round trip flight was Seattle to…Las Vegas. Rain-soaked northwesterners apparently like their sun and sin without the environmental guilt.
More detailed data follows. This probably goes without saying, but we’re not really claiming any statistical significance or grand meaning in these numbers. Just some fun stuff to chew over. Data collected from January 2007 to March 2008.
Top ten vehicles searched for on Terrapass
- Toyota Prius (3.8%)
- Honda Civic (3.5%)
- Honda Accord (2.8%)
- Toyota Camry (2.0%)
- Toyota Corolla (1.9%)
- Honda Civic Hybrid (1.1%)
- Volkswagen Jetta (1.1%)
- Jeep Grand Cherokee 4WD(0.8%)
- Subaru Forester AWD (0.8%)
- Hummer H3 4WD (0.8%)
(Notice that the Hummer sneaks onto the list at #10. We suspect people are trying to find the car with the worst mileage in our database. But the Hummer ain’t it. For that matter, the Prius isn’t the most efficient. What do you think are the best and worst vehicles sold in the last twenty years? Leave your guess in comments.)
Greenest Cities
As measured by Home Terrapasses purchased per capita.
- Chapel Hill, N.C.
- Santa Monica, CA
- Palo Alto, CA
- Berkeley, CA
- Seattle, WA
- San Francisco, CA
- Pasadena, CA
- Arlington, VA
- Minneapolis , MN
- Oakland, CA
Greenest travel destinations, Terrapass-Expedia flight index
As measured by number of flights offset.
- Denver, CO
- Las Vegas, NV
- Portland, OR
- Chicago, IL
- Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
- Orlando, FL.
- Detroit, MI
- Seattle, WA
- Albuquerque, NM
- Phoenix, AZ
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