On holiday in the Lake District: "my son and I have scrambled up Side Pike and are feeling very impressed with ourselves."

After making some pretty drastic changes in our first 10:10 year, I thought our 12% saving would be hard to beat in year two.

But I needn't have worried – in 2011 we managed to bring our footprint down by 19%!

Driving

Carbon from cars was up (+1590kg), mostly because we took our holiday in the UK this year, and went as far as Newcastle. We had no holidays abroad.  We recently purchased a second hand Prius, and we hope that will reduce our footprint even further this year.

Electricity

Thankfully, those extra car miles were mostly offset by a big saving in electricity (-1224 Kg). We were much more careful about turning off lights, and we got rid of our dishwasher in late spring. We think we can get this down further in 2012.

Heating

But our biggest improvement came from heating oil (-4207).  We've just taken a delivery of oil for the first time in 14 months!

To make this saving, we turned down the heating from last year's 15C to 13C this year, and topped up our loft insultaion. We are starting to notice the temperature difference now, but it's still comfortable.

We also installed a woodburning stove in October, and I have ordered enough extra insulation to get our whole house up to scratch.

We're hoping to be both warmer and more fuel-efficient in 2012 as a result of these changes, and we'll also look more closely at the way we use hot water.