TECs Carbon Footprint Tracker
IntroThe following calculator will allow you to work out a meaningful estimate of your Carbon Footprint. It was developed by TECs but is available for anyone to use. You will need to collect some information on what you use and spend. The more complete this is the more representative the results will be. Enter your data in the white fields using the units/measures indicated, you can work out what these are from your bills or other records. Some entry fields have a down arrow when selected, you will need to select one of a number of options.
The resulting Annual CO2 emission under each heading is based on your inputs and mainly government data for the year specified. Please contact us if you'd like further details on data/calculations used in deriving the conversion to annual Carbon emissions. Every effort has been made to be as accurate as possible, however, these are based on national or European averages so will inevitably represent a best effort. The areas are arranged in order of accuracy, starting with the Home/Building as being the most accurate and ending with Stuff as the least accurate. Nevertheless we believe these provide an acceptable estimate of your Carbon Footprint for the amount of effort to input your consumption.
Note that the emissions calculated here are consumption-based, so include emissions of net imports.
In Teignbridge, we need to reduce our Carbon emissions by ~14.4% year on year, if we are to stay below 2 deg C increase, the point at which we are likely to get runaway Climate Change! Please refer to the Track Your Emissions tab.
Try to be as accurate as possible, if you don't have the exact data you can usually estimate this in other ways, contact TECs for help. TECs provides an E-Pack to its members. This can help you measure this consumption more accurately and helps you break it down further so you can take more informed action. This will need a bit more effort, but well worth it.
All feedback is welcome.
Each year you should enter you data for the preceding year.
Select Year
| Enter year to which calculation relates: |
You can also look at, edit and clear data from years you have already entered.
If you wish to clear out all saved footprint data and start again press
If you have saved your data to file and wish to restore it press
Now select the file containing the results you want to restore.
Number in Household
| Number of persons in household: |
Home / Building
Enter usage for each energy source available to you, using meter readings and bills where these are available.
The first cell is a dropdown list which allows you to select each of your energy sources.
As you enter each source the table automatically expands
Cars
Enter data for all cars used by your household.
For electricity (plug-in hybrid and Battery EV cars), only enter mileage from charging away from home. For plug-in hybrid cars make two entries:
- One for petrol/diesel used.
- One for electricity from charging away from home.
you will need to calculate this seperately, please ask TECs for help if you are unsure how to do this.
If you do not readily have your actual fuel consumption, measure this for a representative trial period and record the fuel used in the period and the mileage covered. To enter figures from the trial period press the calculate button, enter the figures and then the consumption will be calculated.
If you do not have an MOT certificate, you can find it here: https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history
Start entering vehicles by selecting an energy source.
| ID: | |||
| Fuel purchased in period: | Litres | ||
| Mileage in period | Miles | ||
Public Transport
Enter mileages travelled by public transport into the table below. For each type of transport select the type of transport and then enter the mileage. You should enter the mileage for your household by each mode, so if 2 people travel 100 miles you should enter 200 miles. You can either add up all your journeys by a mode of transport together and enter one figure, or enter individual trips.
Food
Enter data for all food/drink purchases for your household, include own preparation, restaurants and takeaways.
If unsure of annual expenditure, you can use the annual UK average of £5050 based on average expenditure per person of £2525
Select your diet type (or nearest approximation)
Stuff
Enter your household's annual spend on products. This covers all items you purchase other than food, drink and fuels, so including household appliances, vehicles, building materials and tools, etc.
If unsure of annual product expenditure, you can use the annual UK average used as default £7587 based on average expenditure per person of £3793
Services are fixed based on a set amount per person in the UK multiplied by the number of people in your household. This covers public expenditure (e.g. Health, education, etc), finance, legal and other service sectors.
New building and extensions
Use this section for:
- New buildings bought from a developer
- Custom built new buildings
- Extensions to an existing building
Retrofitting and refurbishent should be included under your total for goods
GHG emissions from building are more related to the floor area of the building than its cost, which often includes a significant amount on land.
The method of construction will also have some effect, lookup values are provided for:
- Concrete frame
- Traditional brick
- Timber frame
If you know the embedded emissions from your building's construction you can also enter these manually, this is likely to be the case if you have commissioned a building using sustainable materials.
Vehicles
Use this section for any vehicle bought or leased/rented under 2 years old.
Notes on New and Leased carsNew and Leased cars
There are two things that make up the embedded emissions from a new or near new vehicle:
- The embedded emissions associated with the manufacture of the vehicle.
- The proportion of emissions associated with the method of finance.
Manufacture emissions
We have considered various studies of embedded emissions over the last few years and considered how these relate to:
- The new price of the vehicle
- The unladen weight of the vehicle
Neither of these is ideal, but unladen weight correlates better than price, so we use that.
Using only weight underestimates the embedded emissions of Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) so a constant is added to compensate for this.
Apportionment due to finance.
In principle the embedded emissions from having a vehicle arise from its manufacture and so are attributable to when it is first purchased. Leasing and rental models can mean that you have a new or nearly new car without purchasing it, If you didn't take advantage of these methods of finance, the car wouldn't be made, so you should still be responsible for some of its emissions. We consider the following cases:
| Method | Description | Treatment |
|---|---|---|
| New purchase | Outright purchase of a new car using finance where you end up owning the vehicle. | Responsible for all emissions |
| Long term lease | Lease of a new car for more than 2 years | Responsible for all emissions |
| Short term lease | Lease or rental for less than 2 years. | Responsible for a proportion of emissions equal to length of lease in years divided by 3. |
| Nearly New | Purchase of a vehicle less than 2 years old. | The emissions are reduced by the age of the vehicle in years divided by 3. |
| Secondhand | Purchase of a vehicle over 2 years old. | 0 - emissions have already been accounted for. |
The embedded emissions from Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) have very different characteristics to Internal Combustion Engined veicles (ICEV)
Where you know the embedded emissions from manufacturer or other sources you can enter these manually.
Summary
Track your emissions
Your emissions history already entered is summarised on this page. The first year you enter sets a baseline from which a Paris Agreement targets are calculated for each of the following years. Compare your actuals against the targets below. Both annual and cumulative targets are shown.
The targets for Teignbridge residents reduce at 14.4%, which is a figure suggested by the Tyndall Centre local authority reports. You can adjust the reduction rate here % for other districts.
Household
Individual
Save your Data
Your data is now stored in local storage in your browser.
Now you have entered all that data it is a good idea to save it to a file. This will enable you to restore it later to either another machine or retrieve your data should it be lost for any reason.
Press to save to file now.
Your file will called mycarbonfootprint.json, where this will be saved depends on your browser and browser setting:
- If you do not have prompting before saving enabled, then it will be saved in the downloads folder on your computer.
- If you have prompting before saving enabled, then you will be prompted to choose a folder.
Restore your Data
If you have saved your data to file and wish to restore it press
Now select the file containing the results you want to restore.
Start again from scratch
If you want to discard all your data entered so far and start again press