Carbon foot printing guide
This guide has been formulated to allow you to measure your own carbon footprint and see what kind of carbon animal you really are…
- Gas and heating
- Electricity
- Transport
- Consumption
- The bottom line
1. Gas and heating
While all tipsters will tell you to wear extra jumpers and turn the thermostat down a notch, your first concern should be to ensure that the insulation for your property is sufficient. If you’re living in a house built post 1930 you should ensure that your cavity walls have been adequately insulated. All should ensure that their lofts have a minimum of 10-inches of insulation to keep the heat from escaping. Anyone interested in having this work done should contact their local council as they are likely to have a grant scheme in place which will drastically reduce the cost of such work, and if you’re a pensioner they will provide this for free.
This is essential activity – despite the grand intentions behind everybody turning the heating down and wearing more clothes, the air inside the house will still be cold and you’ll feel it on your exposed skin!
To calculate your gas footprint, you will need to dig up your bills and find out your figures for kilowatt-hours (kWh). The following is a rough guide to national averages:
- Small house: 10,000 kWh per year
- Medium house: 20,000 kWh per year
- Large house: 28,000 kWh per year
To then convert your kWh into carbon you should multiply the total by 0.19. To then find your personal emissions total, divide by the number of people in the household.
Of course if you don’t actually use gas, and have an oil burning boiler, you will instead need to find out the number of litres you use in a year and multiply this figure by 2.975. Sadly oil is a bigger energy problem than gas as it is more carbon-intensive, so this will likely show up in your results, giving you a higher carbon footprint. You can still smirk at your coal-burning friends though, for they are truly the worst polluters – coal is almost pure carbon and when burnt it gives off almost pure carbon dioxide. So if you’re burning coal, simply take the total weight of the coal being burned in kg and then double it to get the carbon dioxide emissions.
Make a note of the figures.
2. Electricity
Now don’t think we’ve forgotten electricity! Electric central heating is the other most prevalent form of power use in the house, especially as our appetite for electronic gadgets shows no signs of abating.
Again you will need to have your electricity bills out for this one – look again for your kilowatt-hours figure again.
Small house: 1,650kWh per year
Medium house: 3,300kWh per year
Large house: 5,000kWh per year
This time to convert this figure to carbon emissions you will need to multiply by 0.43. Once again to find out personal usage, simply divide by persons in the property.
3. Transport
To calculate your car’s carbon emissions, you will need to multiply your mileage by the car’s emission per mile. This will involve you going on to the vcacarfueldata.org.uk website which will give you a figure for emissions in grams per kilometre (g/km). Make a note of this.
Now multiply this figure by the number of kilometres you have driven over the course of the year. If you’re thinking in miles, multiply your mileage figure by 1.609 to find the figure in kilometres. Divide this by 1,000 to get the total in kilgrams.
For public transport, calculate your weekly journey details and then multiply by 52. Remember to recalculate your mileage into kilometres, multiplying by 1.609.
Train km = x 0.11
Bus km = x 0.09
Underground = x 0.09
Ferry = x 0.47
Add up all of your carbon cost figures to find out your total.
Almost done. Now we have to work out…flights! Yes you thought you could escape it, but unfortunately not. Or fortunately, depending on the way you look at it. Flights are a hugely controversial area of the climate change debate, because no only do jet emissions take place high up in the atmosphere, but the water vapour and other gases emitted by the aircraft in flight actually warms up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, worsening the effect. Why is flying so controversial? Well it’s worth knowing that just taking a single long-haul flight will actually double your carbon footprint for the entire year – not including the return journey!
The best way to calculate your carbon emissions for any flights you have taken would be to visit www.chooseclimate.org/flying which will allow you to click your departure point and destination, calculates distances and emissions. You could also use carboncalculator.org from Climate Care to calculate the same, especially if your geography isn’t so hot.
Once you’ve calculated this, add it all up to find your total carbon emissions from transport.
4. Consumption
The final third of our carbon emissions as a nation comes from – things! Things we buy. There is not a surefire way of measuring the carbon footprint of everything you buy, at least not yet. The following is a mere guide to the possibilities that certain lifestyles will lead to:
- You’re a gimme – you want everything, you have everything, you live to shop and eat packaged convenience food every chance you get: 3,000kg
- You’re fairly concerned about the amount you spend and consume – but when you need new things you buy them and tend to buy your necessities from the supermarket: 2,000kg
- You’re living the good life – you have either an allotment or other means by which to grow your own produce. You shop locally, reuse and recycle, and buy things from the local second-hand store: 600kg.
Now make a note of your carbon footprint from consumption!
5. The final word
Ok, so we’ve got a few totals to add up. With some trepidation and no little guilt, add the figures together to come to your grand total – your carbon footprint! Apparently our ideal ‘carbon budget’ should be 1,000kg, which it is claimed is sustainable – this is the target figure for the entire population of the planet, not just ourselves.
So how do you measure up?
- 1,000-3,000kg. If this is the case, pat yourself on the back and then use sandpaper to file your nose back to its original size, Pinocchio.
- 3,000-6,000kg. You’re doing well – at this level you have nothing to be ashamed of.
- 6,000-9000kg. This is close to the national average, but an indicator that you’re not over-consuming at quite the rate the rest of us are.
- 9,000-12,000kg. You’re at the stage where you seriously need to adjust your lifestyle towards a better, more energy efficient and more community-spirited way.
- 12,000-15,000kg. Too much.
- 15,000-18,000kg. Far too much. You’re at the same level as Tony Blair who measures at 17,900kg.
- 18,000-21,000kg. Congratulations – you’re at the same level as our Yankee cousins across the pond.
- 21,000kg+. You’re catastrophically carbon obese.