The 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 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 from a number of options.
The resulting annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under each heading is based on your inputs and mainly government data
for the year specified. The areas are arranged in order of accuracy, starting with Buildings as being the most accurate and 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.
All emission factors include those generated outside the UK
Note that the emissions calculated here are all based on your consumption.
They include emissions of net imports
(referred to as Scope-3 emissions for fuels in the BEIS source data).
This will give a higher emission level than most other calculators,
but gives a more complete picture.
We also include all associated Green-House Gas emissions measured in weight of CO2equivalent (CO2e),
not just the CO2 emissions which some sources use.
In Teignbridge, we need to reduce our Carbon emissions by ~14.4% year on year,
to remain below 1.5 deg C increase,
the point at which we are likely to get runaway Climate Change!
Please refer to the Budget Tracking 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.
All feedback is welcome.
Notes about the app.
The TECs Carbon Footprint Tracker app is part of the TECs E-Pack programme - see
TECs Energy-Assessment Introduction. for more details.
The CFT is available to everyone as a starting point to find out where they are and where they need to get to in terms of Climate Change.
This app has been designed to be as simple to use as possible yet provide meaningful information.
It is particularly useful for anyone who wants to find out more about their Energy use and associated GHG emissions.
It is, however, only the start of the journey which we hope will raise questions about what to do next.
Questions the rest of the E-Pack should help answer.
Notes on how it works.
Although part of the E-Pack, the CFT can be used independently by anyone.
It is only available as an on-line app hosted on the TECs website.
The user’s personal data is stored in a file on their personal device.
Only the user has access to this, The app will only process this data within the private file.
TECs will never copy, use or access any personal data for any purpose.
The app is accessible through an internet browser. Browsers tested are:
Google Chrome ; Microsoft Edge ; Mozilla Firefox
Other browsers not fully tested by TECs but used by members include:
Apple Safari
How it is different.
There are very many Carbon Footprint Calculators available on the internet and elsewhere.
These can be free to use or, for those that provide a greater degree of analysis, require a fee/subscription.
The majority of the more accessible calculators tend to be based on generic information (e.g. national averages or ‘typical’ examples)
to make their use as simple as possible, i.e. with minimal effort from the user.
The information entered would be readily available (e.g. number of bedrooms or type of diet).
Some of the more sophisticated calculators require the user to input £ spent, miles driven, and kWh consumed.
These can become over complicated for most users and are intended more for professionals to assess carbon emissions for organisations.
The CFT attempts to strike a balance between ease of use and a meaningful,
personalised footprint calculation.
This means that in some areas we’ve had to compromise on accuracy to achieve ease of use.
Nevertheless, we believe it provides sufficient accuracy for a first order assessment while
remaining accessible to the vast majority who want to calculate their footprint.
It is not aimed at making people aware that Climate Change is a serious issue, an emergency.
The target users of the CFT are those who have a good degree of appreciation of the challenge.
They are interested in doing something about this, something different to what they have been doing already.
They may also want to talk to others about this but need to get an understanding of their own GHG emissions
as well as the app and possibly the E-Pack programme itself.
The app is therefore available to anyone, but it only represents an initial assessment.
For those users who wish to access further details of their energy consumption and GHG emissions
in the different areas identified, this is provided by further elements of the E-Pack and/or support
to TECs Members.
This process, tools, apps and support are there to help them achieve the best assessment of their
Energy use for the level of input and skill they want to put into it.
The main differences between this app and most others offered commercially or free on the web are:
it is completely personalised, in other words it is based on the user’s consumption data making it
as accurate as possible for the amount of user effort needed.
it is comprehensive, covering every aspect of consumption and GHG emissions,
regardless of where these emissions occur.
It is largely based on UK government published data for GHG intensities as well as other UK and European sources in some areas.
It includes a target tracking facility based on the 2018 IPCC report and later updates.
Start here
Each year you should enter your data for the preceding year.
You cannot select a year for which there isn't government data (carbon factors).
As well as entering the year here, you can use the dropdown list of years on the toolbar to select the appropriate year.
Enter year to which calculation relates:
Note on years
The reference year for Budget Tracking is 2019.
If you have not entered previous years back to and including 2019,
the app will extrapolate your first entry year back to 2019.
This will be done on the basis of government historic changes to GHG emissions for Teignbridge.
Please refer to the notes in Budget Tracking for further explanations or contact TECs.
Carbon Factors and Carbon Intensities change year on year,
sometimes these change retrospectively as actual data replaces provisional data.
The app is updated automaticall to reflect the latest available data, you may therefore see
some variation in the resulting GHG emissions when newer versions are released.
Each year you should start by entering the number of people.
Enter the number of people in household, building or organisation:
Then fill in each tab with your data for the year.
When you have filled in the data for the year, you can:
See a summary for the year on the Summary tab
Monitor your progress against budget on the Budget Tracking tab
Buildings
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 for you to include more.
No year selected. Please select year from the banner,
or if you haven't entered any data do so on the Start Here tab.
Private Transport
Enter data for all vehicles used. Start entering vehicles by Selecting Fuel Type.
As you enter each source the table automatically expands for you to include more.
For Battery-EV and Plug-in-Hybrids, only enter mileage from charging away from home.
For Plug-in-Hybrids make two entries:
One for electricity from charging away from home.
One for petrol/diesel used.
You will need to calculate/estimate the mileage for each separately, please ask TECs for help if you are unsure how to do this.
If you do not have your actual fuel consumption, select the 'calculate' option for consumption.
You can measure this for a representative trial period.
Record the fuel used in the period and the mileage covered.
To enter figures from the trial period, press the additional calculate button. Make sure you
have selected correct units to match those of the trial period.
ID:
Fuel purchased in period:
Litres
Mileage in period
Miles
No year selected
Public Transport
Enter all modes of transport that you've used.
As you enter each mode the table automatically expands for you to include more.
Enter the total distance travelled by each.
You should enter the total distance travelled by each individual. So if 2 people travel 100 miles by bus 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.
No year selected
Food
Enter your diet type (or nearest approximation).
You can enter several diets for occupants with different diets.
As you enter each diet the table automatically expands for you to include more.
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 expenditure per person
of £2525 , this equates to a total of £5050 for your household.
If you'd like to use a more detailed breakdown of food groups/items, you can use the E-Pack app.
Please contact TECs for further details on this.
Diets
Typical contents of diets are given in the following table
Diet
Contents
Plant Based
Diet based only on plants, strictly no animal derived products.
Vegetarian
Mainly plant based, but dairy (butter, cheese, milk) and eggs allowed.
Light meat eater
This covers a variety of diets which do not include much red meat,
pescatarian - fish based, white meat - chicken, and possibly some pork based products
Standard UK
Diet made up of products listed in the ONS household survey using the same weighting.
This diet is typical of an average UK household
Heavy meat eater
Diet with an above average amount of meat, particularly red meat - beef and lamb.
Every main meal has a substantial portion of red meat.
Known Emissions
This allows you to enter calculated emissions from another source such as the EPack into the spend column
No year selected
Stuff
Stuff refers to goods and services we spend our disposable income on.
There are two categories:
Public services is a fixed amount per person in the UK multiplied by the number of people you have entered.
This covers public expenditure (Local and Central government taxation).
General spending enter everything you spend apart from:
Items already covered under Buildings, Private and Public transport, Food
New building and New vehicles that are entered on the next tabs as these have different conversion factors.
Council tax
Central government taxation, such as income tax and national insurance.
Any additional items you add with known emissions.
If you are unsure of your general expenditure,
you can use the annual UK average expenditure per person of £3793 ,
or a total of £7587 for your household.
If you have items whose emissions you know, enter additional rows, select known emissions, enter the emissions.
If you'd like to use a more detailed breakdown of general spending types/items, you can use the E-Pack app.
Please contact TECs for further details on this.
No year selected
New buildings
Use this section for:
New buildings bought
Custom built new buildings
Extensions to an existing building
Retrofitting, refurbishment and smaller building alterations should be included under your total for goods.
GHG emissions from building are more closely related to the floor area of the building than its cost,
which often includes a significant amount for land.
The method of construction will also have some effect, select the type of your new building/extenstion from:
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.
Include In
By default new buildings bought in 2019 are included in your baseline and all buildings are included in cumulative figures.
As the embedded emissions in buildings can be quite large this would mask the details of other areas.
You can use the "include" options to temporarily ignore if a building is included in:
Baseline & Cumulative (option available in 2019 only): considered in baseline and cumulative budget
Cumulative only: not considered in 2019 baseline, but included in cumulative budgets
Neither: not considered in either baseline or cumulative budgets
No year selected
New Vehicles
Use this section for any vehicle bought or leased/rented under 2 years old.
Please refer to the notes for more details.
You can find the weight of your vehicle in its user manual or on-line,
it is also displayed on the body of the vehicle.
Notes on New and Leased vehicles
New and Leased vehicles
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 vehicle without purchasing it. If you didn't take advantage of these methods
of finance, the vehicle wouldn't have been 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 vehicle using finance where you end up owning the vehicle.
Responsible for all emissions
Long term lease
Lease of a new vehicle 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.
Second hand
Purchase of a vehicle over 2 years old.
0 - as emissions have already been accounted for.
Finance contracts come under a number of different names,
not all of which are covered by the table above.
Ownership of the vehicle at the end of the finance contract is the critical factor
in determining if finance is a lease or purchase.
Lease - at the end of the contract you do not end up with ownership of the vehicle.
Purchase - at the end of the contract you end up with ownership of the vehicle.
The embedded emissions from Battery Electric Vehicles (BEV) have very different characteristics
to Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles.
Where you know the embedded emissions from manufacturer or other sources you can enter these manually.
Include In
By default new vehicles bought in 2019 are included in your baseline and all vehicles are included in cumulative figures.
As the embedded emissions in vehicles can be quite large this would mask the details of other areas.
You can use the "include" options to temporarily ignore if a vehicle is included in:
Baseline & Cumulative (option in 2019 only): considered in baseline and cumulative budget
Cumulative only: not considered in 2019 baseline, but included in cumulative budgets
Neither: not considered in either baseline or cumulative budgets
No year selected
Summary
No year selected
Help for Summary.
The pie chart is interactive. If you click on a slice of the chart,
you are taken to the corresponding tab.
Budget Tracking
Your emissions history already entered is summarised on this page.
2019 sets your baseline emissions from which your targets are calculated for each of the following years.
Compare your actuals against the targets below.
The targets for Teignbridge residents reduce annually by 10.5%.
These are derived from the global carbon budget given in IPCC's AR6 report for a 67% chance of limiting temperature rise from the start of the industrial revolution to 1.5C by 2100.
Emissions budgets are allocated to Teignbridge based on its share of global CO2 emissions in 2020.
We have aligned the budget allocation to that set by the UK Committee on Climate Change, albeit at 67% probability.
Previously we had used a budget figure suggested by the Tyndall Centre local authority reports.
This allocated a lower UK budget because it accounted for historic emissions.
You can adjust the annual reduction rate here % for other districts in the UK.
Your total budget is shown below. As you enter your consumption each year, this budget
will 'fill up' as your actual emissions increase year on year.
Data Tables
Notes on Targets and Budgets
Total
Individual
The 2018 IPCC report and the Tyndall Centre's implementation of this for UK ‘lower tier’ planning
authorities is essentially a statement of how much more net GHG emissions we can emit before we exceed
a limit that will trigger ‘runaway Climate Change’.
This total budget has been ‘fairly’ allocated to countries/regions and annual budgets set that would
not exceed 1.5 degree C temperature rise.
Help for Budget Tracking.
The barchart shown here is interactive.
If you click on a year for which there is data,
the year is selected.
If you also click on a segment of the actual bar, the tab for that bar is shown.
Save/Restore
Save your Data
Your data is now stored in local storage in your browser.
Now that 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 device or retrieve your data should it be lost for any reason.
Press to save to file now.
Your file will called .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.
Starting again
If you want to discard all your data entered so far and start again press
If you want to delete data for a single year, then select the year in the toolbar,
and then press
No year selected. Please select year from the toolbar or the start here tab.
Keyboard functions for editing tables
About
The following tables on this page are for you to enter your data, you can move around each
table easily by using the following keys:
Key
Function
Tab
Moves to the next input cell
Enter
Moves on to the next page
In addition the following keys work within text input fields (not dropdown lists) only in the current table:
Backspace
Delete the preceding character
Del
Delete the current character
Down
Moves to the input cell immediately below
Up
Moves to the input cell immediately above
Right
Moves one character right and to the next input cell when at the end of text
Left
Moves one character left and to the previous input cell when at the beginning of text
When used in dropdown lists the arrow keys change the current selection.
