SSAFE’s mission statement incorporates this need. It states: “To address the climate crisis with the urgency it requires, SSAFE chapters educate and partner with their committees and administrations, with other chapters, and with other senior living communities to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050.” It is our intent that the SSAFE Pathway will offer the information your retirement community needs in order to begin making progress toward that goal.
What is “carbon neutrality”? We need to have a common understanding of carbon neutrality if we are to achieve it. The simplest way to think about carbon neutrality is to say that it is a matter of eliminating fossil fuels. That’s a useful first approximation, but it omits some important details.
First of all, carbon dioxide (CO2) is not the only GHG, so the objective is really reaching neutrality for all GHGs. “Carbon neutrality” is just a shorthand way of describing that goal.
Also, for some communities there will be a few fossil fuel uses that linger on indefinitely. An example might be an outdoor propane grill or a or a rarely-used emergency gasoline generator. To compensate for these small uses, “carbon offsets” will need to be used. (They are the subject of Section 7 in this Pathway guide. (link) .) If the offsets compensate completely for the fossil fuel uses, then carbon neutrality is achieved.
It’s clear that fossil fuels burned on campus have to be eliminated, but what about fossil fuels used to generate the electricity that the community uses? What about the gasoline in residents’ cars or the fuels consumed by farmers in growing our food? Ultimately, all of these fossil fuel uses will need to be eliminated or offset in order to achieve carbon neutrality, which is the focus of this guide.
How did SSAFE choose the2050 target? Back in 2015, 196 countries came together in Paris to adopt the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The objective was to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C. To do so, scientists estimated that eliminating or offsetting all greenhouse gases by 2050 would be necessary; and to reach that 2050 objective.
