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Footprinting

footprinting

This is the summary page for the footprinting tag, but there are also lists of other footprinting wikipages, as well as of forum posts and files.

A carbon footprint is a measure of all the carbon (or carbon equivalent) emissions attributable to a person or activity. Because many products generate emissions at each stage of their life-cycle, it is often necessary to account for these in a carbon footprint by conducting a life-cycle analysis (LCA).

This page is about personal carbon footprints, which are only part of total per-capita emissions. Personal footprints only include emissions directly contributed by personal activities (including air transport, electricity, heating and car transport). The remaining part is contributed indirectly by society to provide us with services (eg. transport infrastructure, security). There is some debate whether services like food and public transport are part of the personal or societal footprint. In the UK, the personal:societal split of total per-capita emissions is around 50:50.

Typical footprints

Per-capita emissions vary widely across the world, mostly as a result of different levels of development and reliance on fossil fuels. For example, in 2000, average footprints in the US (20tCO2) were more than double European (8.3t) and ten times greater than Asian (2.2t) footprints 1. How these figures translate into personal footprints, however, depends on the balance of personal and societal emissions (above).

UK footprints

UK personal footprint by sector, 2003

In 2003, the average UK citizen caused 5.4 tonnes of CO2 to enter the atmosphere 2. In order of importance, these were due to:

Calculating/monitoring footprints

Individual sectors of a footprint are calculated by multiplying the amount of fuel used over a set time period by a conversion factor, which is an estimate of the amount of CO2 released by burning a certain amount of fuel, or travelling a certain distance. The total personal footprint is then found by adding up all the sectors you have decided to include ie. electricity, heating, air & car transport, and possibly public transport and food.

There are several types of aids to help work out your footprint:

  • Worksheets: a printed table with conversion factors; manual calculation by calculator
  • Spreadsheets: set up with conversion factors to do all the calculating based on your energy use data
  • Web-based carbon accounting: derive your energy use information from meter readings and do all the calculations to provide you with regularly updated CO2 data.

Also see: How do I calculate my Carbon Footprint?, Carbon conversion factors.

Carbon accounting

  • ActonCO2 – the government’s carbon calculator
  • Methodology behind ActonCO2 including UK average footprint calculations
  • Carbon Diet – carbon accounting tool
  • The Carbon Account – carbon accounting tool (in beta)
  • My Carbon – carbon accounting tool (log your past or present CO2)
  • AMEE – calculation, profiling and transaction engine including methodologies/data from Defra and many other countries.

“Lifestyle” footprints

  1. WRI CO2 emissions per capita, at http://earthtrends.wri.org/searchable_db/index.php?action=select_countri…

  2. Mayer Hillman “How we can save the planet”, Penguin (2004). Table 4 p148. See http://coinet.org.uk/solutions/carbon-rationing.