Measure your Carbon Footprint

We are in the process of drawing up a list of the various ideas for action that have been suggested so far for Transition Ashtead.  One that I’ve suggested is setting up a group that enables each member to measure their personal carbon footprint, set a target to reduce it, and then monitor over a year to see if the target is met.  You then repeat the process with another target for the year after that.  I’ve just come across this website that is the best I’ve seen for measuring your carbon footprint: http://www.thecarbonaccount.com/.

The site invites you first to answer a few questions about your lifestyle from which it estimates your carbon footprint in tonnes/year CO2.  To calculate your footprint accurately you have to enter gas and electricity meter readings, car mileage and destinations of any holiday flights.  Once you have entered two readings at different dates, your footprint for the period between the two dates in kg CO2 is calculated.  This is extrapolated to give an approximate annual footprint and this gradually becomes more accurate as you enter more readings.  I have recorded all my readings for the past year, and the calculator let me enter all these past readings, and here is a screen dump of the result.

My Carbon Footprint

Because I don’t fly my footprint is dominated by my gas usage which is dominated by heating as you can see from the big increase over the winter.

The website explains everything very well and so I do encourage you to have a look and start to enter your readings.  Please leave a comment on how you found it, and especially if you’re interested in joining a carbon monitoring group.

Derek Smith