kirti |
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Not from Georgia or Maryland? Want to start your own CRAG?
First of all, visit: http://www.carbonrationing.org.uk/how.
Some notes from me on starting a CRAG in the USA:
1. email the site admin and tell them that you are interested
to start a CRAG.I started mine by contacting Shannon in Maryland after few chats with her,I was inspired to do this in Georgia.
Then it was done and I was like….,well whatt do i do now ,so called my friend Balvinder to help and with Shannons and his help got this going!
we set up a welcome page with information and then got
people set up to start tracking their emissions. The good news is
that some of the work for setting up a CRAG in the US is already done.
The other good news is that I just went through the process and can
explain it to you:
2. Create the CRAG. Set up some basic info on your site about who you
are, your emissions target, your “Carbon Year”, etc. See below. Have
your friends sign up on the CRAG website. Once you are the site
administrator for your CRAG, you can go in and set up the group
site and add members.
3. Set your emissions limit per year (I set ours at 10.0% below
national average for what we are tracking, national average being
20,000 lbs and 10.0% reduction being 17,500 lbs- it might be a little
low because I did not include emissions from air travel)
4. Decide when your “Carbon Year” begins- you will be counting your
emissions by year and you will want a little time to get up and
rolling so that everyone is in the habit of tracking and knows how.
You might also want time to get people on board. That is why I set
ours for November 1.
5. Decide if you want to set a penalty for going over each person’s
personal emissions, or a reward if you go under. I decided not to
have one this year and figured we could establish that for future
years if people want it. Some CRAGs do this and some don’t.
6. Decide how you want people to track their emissions. First of all,
are you going to have the “Carbon Accountant” actually validate
everyone’s bills? Or will you trust people to report their bills
accurately in whatever tracking device you use? Also, what types of
emissions will you count and how will you count them? If you look at
the Maryland site under files, I put together a spreadsheet that
counts direct energy use through electricity bills, vehicle miles or
gallons, fuel bills or gallons used, and size of airplane trips taken.
There are lots of different ways to count the numbers but these
seemed both simple and accurate.
7. Figure out how energy usage will convert to emissions. Again, the
spreadsheet that I put up has some standard conversions. Other than
looking up the emissions per kWh electricity in your particular region, you are good
to go (the link is on the excel sheet).
8. Track emissions and settle up. Some groups count every 6 months,
some every 3, some have trial runs, etc. You are only required to
report every year. Decide what to do with your money if you happen to
have collected any.
A lot of groups get together to do their accounting and brainstorming
and this seems ideal if you can pull it off. It’s also good to
provide your group with information about carbon reductions- I have
some up and there is a lot of info on the web. Check out the minutes
for various groups and their meetings to see what they have done that
you like. Some groups use the CRAG site a lot and some do not. Some
have yahoo groups, etc, that have more functions on them. Mine is
just on the CRAG site for now. Feel free to hang around the Maryland
site as long as you like. As long as you are a member here, you can
receive emails when someone posts to the forum.
‹ New members and prospective members read here! How to join the Maryland CRAG! UK Govt’s official carbon calculator launched, 20 June 2007 ›