UK Govt's official carbon calculator launched, 20 June 2007

Guy S

website team CRAGger Islington

I’d be really interested in getting people’s opinions of the Government’s methodology behind the calculator. You can find a document explaining the methodology here: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/uk/individual/pdf/acto…

From first skim, things to note include: no public transport, no food emissions (fair enough), no factoring in of radiative forcing for aircraft emissions.

Are there any criticisms? Any particularly good points? How user-friendly or accurate do people feel it is? Especially if you’ve tried other carbon calculators.

juunglee

CRAGger Hackney CRAG Islington Luton

I tried the government’s new calculator and compared it with my three month trial period and the margin of difference is 0.02. Good work!

Nimish

angelaraffle

CRAGger Redland Bristol

I’ve just tried the govt site. I think its very attractive to use and therefore should be great for getting people interested. I tried it out for household of 6 though and found it was quite ambiguous as to whether it was telling me household or divided by 6 (quite important), and surely the appliances are a subset of the home energy youve already done, so thats a bit confusing, and if you keep a record of your quarterly gas from meter readings so you know the cubic metres, then you cant put that in. And then I put in one long haul flight to see what happened and it ought to come out as 4.5 tonnes but it said 0.8. So although I think its very good, I much prefer the crag spreadsheet because I can see what its doing. Angela
Bristol
www.sustainableredland.org.uk

In the FAQs under Results it says
“ Why do you still give me a CO2 total for my electricity supply when I am on a Green Tariff?
The renewable electricity generation supply in the UK is currently around 4%. This clean generating capacity has already been added to the mixture of energy generating technologies that make up the UK’s CO2 emission factor (see FAQ: What is meant by the UK CO2 emission factor for energy?). Hence the low carbon factor of the green energy you are using has already been accounted for and helped to slightly lower the general CO2 intensity of our electricity supply.

The important factor in opting for a “Green Tariff” is to show the energy suppliers that there is a demand for renewable energy and so they should be investing in new generating capacity, your support is vital in helping to support the expansion of this clean, low carbon energy supply.”

This assumption is debatable. The underlying data source for this calculator (AMEE)does distinguish between the carbon intensity of different suppliers and currently shows 100% renewable electricity supplier Good Energy as having a zero carbon intensity. I think there is a good case for encouraging people to switch to a good quality 100% renewable tariff and be rewarded with a lower carbon footprint. I have participated in an active debate on this on this forum. See
Green Electricity

People might like to compare ActOnCo2 with The Carbon Account. I am not clear whether ActOnCO2 lets you enter data repeatedly in such a way that you can see your reduction efforts bear fruit.