Calculate Your Carbon Footprint

Summary: Berkeley carbon calculator

Description

One way to get started and motivated to take the various Actions listed on this site is to estimate your current level of carbon emissions.

Very ambitious and comprehensive actions are called for by the goal stated in the Climate Emergency Declaration adopted by the September 2020 Acton Town Meeting: to “bring net Town-wide carbon emissions to zero as quickly as possible, with a target date of 2030.”  To help you prioritize the Actions that yield the greatest reductions, this Energize Acton website indicates, for many of the Actions, the degree of emissions reduction the Action can achieve on average. These emission reductions can be compared with your current emissions to see how much progress you can make.

One of the most trustworthy and used carbon calculators is the so-called Berkeley Calculator created by CoolClimate. Households and businesses can enter their consumption of electricity, fuels, foods, etc. and the calculator shows how many tons of CO2 that represents, and how you stack up against similar households or businesses. At the end you can pledge to do other actions and the calculator will show you what that would mean for your footprint. 

You will see that the calculator is not limited to emissions from energy use, nor to the emissions counted in the 2019 Acton Emissions Inventory, most of which were from energy use and limited to "Scope 2" emissions (essentially, emissions from your own activities). The calculator can show you that your purchases of goods and services also cause substantial additional carbon emissions — including emissions at the locations where goods are manufactured and packaged, and food grown. Calculating your current emissions with the Berkeley Calculator will give you important information about your impacts and help you participate in discussions of Acton's future carbon accounting and climate action.

We’ve used quite a few of the Berkeley Calculator’s principles and estimates in our own carbon calculator. Where is our calculator? When you sign up with Energize Acton, you will find the calculator in your profile. As you add items to your To-do list and Actions to your Completed list, our calculator will show you the impacts of your activities. Huzzah for you!

Deep Dive

Steps to Take

1. Go here for the Cool Climate household footprint calculator.

2. Go here for calculating the carbon footprint for a business.

3. Estimate how much of your carbon emissions you can eliminate through the Actions on this Energize site, and how much will be left (such as emissions from air travel).

4. Let us know how it went by leaving a Testimonial under the tab above!