what is carbon footprint?
To start minimising your carbon emissions, you need to know your carbon footprint. This is the measure
as to how much impact our lifestyle have to the environment. Carbon footprints will soon show up on labels
on the goods you buy.
how?
There are plenty of carbon emissions calculator out there telling you how much you or your household emits
in a year. It is not accurate, but it will tell you in a much more clearer way how your actions directly
affects the environment.
The WWF calculator gives you results in units of planets – meaning it take this many earths to sustain your
current lifestyle. Links to the more popular calculators are found below:
At the moment, the Act on CO2 calculator is a calculator engine developed by Defra (department for environment
food and rural affairs). This is aimed to be a central calculation engine to make sure there is a consistent
set of data presented to the public.
how does the calculator work?
You will be asked a series of questions that would help the calculator determine your lifestyle. The assumption
is that a good majority of a household’s carbon emissions are from space and water heating. So there are bound to
be more questions regarding your property and heating bills to give a more accurate result. Your total energy
consumption is estimated and the carbon emissions are worked out from there using data which calculated the CO2
emissions per GWh supplied from the grid. They also use data from the DTI (department of transport) to calculate
the carbon emissions from various types of fuel. For aviation, the most recent statistics are used for the
calculations in terms of journey lengths and load. The calculations for international flights are said to be
underestimates as a more accurate way of estimating the CO2 from flights by UK residents. Aviation is split down
into local, short haul and long haul international flights as there are big variations on the emissions in these
three types.
If you’re willing to get to the more technical info on the calculator, Defra has a
document on the technicalities.
Or read through the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory website. These forms
the Technical data used in the formal documents submitted to the EU and the UN to see if the UK progress in
achieving the targets. We must admit, this one goes a bit over our head.