How many trees does it take to offset the carbon used by my homes natural gas use?

 My family of 4 lives in Southwest Ohio. We have a nice 2100 square foot house that is heated with Natural Gas. Our tankless water heater is also natural gas as well. Otherwise, the rest of the house is powered by electricity. We heat our house at 68F during the day and 66F at night. Our natural gas utility bill tells us that in the last 12 months we used 699.357 Therms of natural gas.  So how many trees are required to capture the CO2 generated by the natural gas we use? 

Natural Gas is one of the 'cleaner fossil fuels' so that is good news and natural gas will provide a great bridge to carbon-free energy. So one term of natural gas burned created 11.7 pounds of CO2. 

We also know that a tree uses 53.8 Grams of CO2 a day to grow the trees. Trees by far are the best carbon capture thing we have. The CO2 basically becomes the tree. Here's to my high school biology knowledge of photosynthesis. So now have enough data to answer the question. 

Givens

• Yearly Therms used Natural Gas: 699 Therms/Year
• 1 Therm burned: 11.7 pounds of CO2 
• 1 Tree consumes  53.8 grams of C02 per day

Math

• 699 Therms per year/365 Days = 1.9 Therms/Day
• 1.9 Therms per day * 11.7 Pounds of CO2 = 22.4 Pounds of CO2 per day
• Convert to grams: 22.4 Pounds/ 0.0022 = 10,182 grams of CO2 per day
• 10,182 Grams per day/53.8 Grams per Tree per day = 190 Trees

190 trees may sound like a lot but it turns out that you can purchase trees for $1 each through One Tree Planted. So for $190 paid once, not yearly my family can offset the Carbon that is created by heating our home. Given that the Socal Cost of Carbon is $50 on a ton, this is an amazing investment. Additional math tells us that we produce 4.1 tons of CO2 a year heating our home is $205 in real social costs of carbon a year. The payback period less than a year. For the accounting nerds that is an IRR of 107% if the trees last 50 years. Planting Trees makes a lot of sense.