Please Note: It is not necessary to have any special technical knowledge or mathematical ability to fully enjoy and
benefit from an Atlantic EcoWorks course or seminar. No one will ever be required to labour over a calculator,
or even add two plus two, unless that's what they choose to do! The following calculations are provided
only to substantiate the statement on the previous page.
If your household has two vehicles, you may be
paying more each year for gasoline than for heating oil.
Transportation Costs
According to Transport Canada's
2007
Vehicle Survey, the average light vehicle (including cars, SUVs, vans, etc.) was driven 15,797 kilometers and consumed 10.8
litres of fuel per 100 kilometers (1,706 litres per year).
Therefore, the annual fuel consumption for two average vehicles
would be 3,412 litres and at a cost of $1.10 per litre, the total fuel bill for both vehicles will be $3,753.
Home
Heating Costs
According to
Natural Resources Canada, an old detached house (that is, a house built before 1990) in Charlottetown
has an annual heating load of 110 Gigajoules, while a new house has an annual heating load of 80 Gigajoules - the average being 95
Gigajoules (which is 95,000 Megajoules).
A litre of heating oil contains 38.2 Megajoules per litre. If you have
an oil-fired boiler, which is quite typical for homeowners in our province, and it has an efficiency of 85 percent, then
each litre of oil will produce 32.5 Megajoules of heat.
The annual heating load will require 2,923 litres of oil (95,000
Megajoules/32.5 Megajoules per litre = 2,923 litres).
If heating oil costs $0.80 per litre, the annual fuel bill for
home heating will be $2,338.
Transportation Costs vs. Home Heating Costs