Since 1954
The power of community
Since 1954
The power of community
Welcome to the Zero Emissions Network page, powered by the American Solar Energy Society and by you, the citizens of Earth. At ZEN, we believe that the only path towards creating a sustainable future for all of the residents of this planet, human and otherwise, is by understanding the effects of our actions and working together to solve problems. We believe that individual citizens such as yourself are eager to make a difference in their lives and communities by reducing emissions. But, all too often, we find that we don’t know how to best reduce our emissions. Maybe it is too expensive, it seems too time consuming, or sometimes we simply do not know what else we can do. Our goal at ZEN is to provide the knowledge and the resources to each individual (like you) to help you understand how you can reduce your emissions. To do this, we follow a four-question outline to provide the answers to the following questions:
We believe that the solutions are out there. Many times, people just do not know where to find them. We encourage you to read through the website and learn as much as you can. The more you know, the better! We also encourage you to send us feedback! Information is always changing and we want to know what you think. How do you like our program? How can we improve? Is our information outdated or incorrect? We also like success stories. How did you use our information to reduce your emissions? Please send your thoughts to zen@ases.org. And join the discussion in the ASES Online Community!
Our team is headquartered in Boulder, Colorado. So let’s kick off the discussion of emissions by taking a look at our own city.
According to the City of Boulder Greenhouse Gas Inventory, community-wide emissions for Boulder of ~2.7 million metric tons of CO2 as of 2024 represents a 29% drop below the 2018 baseline! This was accomplished primarily through a cleaner electric grid and more use of EVs. We at ZEN are super excited to see this amazing reduction accomplished by the city, just since the start of our team!
FYI, Boulder emissions are currently ~38% from building electricity, 28% from building natural gas, 33% from transportation, and 1% from solid waste and wastewater treatment. There is more information about this for those interested on our Local Government and Grid page.
But what is a metric ton of CO2 really?
We found what we think is a great video using New York as an example that shows just that. For perspective, we should mention that New York City, which is about 80 times larger than Boulder by population, emits around 58 million metric tons of CO2 per year. The Environmental Defense fund sponsored this cool (or not so cool) video to visualize just how much CO2 that is: NYC Annual Production of One-Ton Spheres of CO2.