Last updated 7/22/08
Here’s a listing of carbon calculators I’ve looked at. There’s a lot of them out there, all variations on a theme, looking at home usage, cars and miles, and flights, with variations in the amount of specificity vs gloss. Some sell offsets. A couple allow the participants to create groups and aggregate the groups’ savings, showing leaders. Many provide good information on how their calculations are done, including assumptions and data sources.
Here's a summary of some of the more interesting ones:
The Climate Trust: http://www.carboncounter.org/ -- basic calculator, for each area (home, vehicle, flights) offers either a simple estimate or a detailed entry option. The punchline is purchasing offsets, not remediation actions.
Berkeley Institute of the Environment (UC Berkeley): http://bie.berkeley.edu/files/climatefootprint.swf -- emissions calculator with a really nice graphical presentation of the results along with a comparison to averages.
Terrapass: http://www.terrapass.com/carbon-footprint-calculator/ -- basic calculator. Two points of distinction are: (1) they use localized power plant data to calculate emissions from your electicity usage, and (2) it's oriented towards selling carbon offsets (which is their business).
Cool Capital Challenge: http://www.coolcapitalchallenge.org – a great DC-centered site that makes CO2 reduction a cooperative challenge. Individuals and organizations make pledges for CO2 reductions and their publicly pledges are posted and aggregated into the overall total (without, as far as I can tell, a means to go back and post actual progress/results). For individuals there’s a basic calculator, but with the addition of a good list of reduction actions to take. For businesses and other organizations, it’s a much more in-depth site, but byzantine – I couldn’t find where they actually participate in the challenge (altho it must be there since they list participant organizations and their results).
Minnesota Energy Challenge: http://www.mnenergychallenge.org – similar to the Cool Capital Challenge, this one based in Minnesota, it lets individuals, teams, organizations jointly make commitments for CO2 reductions and they publicly list the leaders. Their leader list shows the top participants in these categories: cities, facilities, businesses, certs, congregations, schools, government agencies, environmental groups, block clubs, and others. They have a very comprehensive list of personal reduction actions.
The Cool School Challenge: http://www.coolschoolchallenge.org/ -- this isn’t an online form-based calculator, but rather a framework with worksheets for schools to estimate their CO2 output and then act on a program to reduce it. For this it seems really well done.
StepGreen.org: http://stepgreen.org – this site takes a different approach. Rather than trying to figure out your current carbon footprint, it jumps right into actions you can take to reduce your carbon footprint and it calculates the savings you’ll achieve. It has a very rich list of reduction actions. It also encourages sharing your actions and results with friends.
CarbonFund.org: http://carbonfund.org/site/pages/calculator/ -- simple one page calculator. Notably in their assumptions page they have a comprehensive set of links to the underlying data used for the calculations: http://www.carbonfund.org/site/pages/carbon_calculators/category/Assumptions/ Great source of data.
An Inconvenient Truth: http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/carboncalculator/ -- a simple basic calculator.
Yahoo: http://green.yahoo.com/calculator – very simple calculator, but with lots of personal reduction actions.
BP: http://www.bp.com/extendedsectiongenericarticle.do?categoryId=9021749&contentId=7044493 – another basic calculator, but with more conservation options than most, such as insulation, draft proofing, double glazing, turning off equipment, showers vs baths, and so forth.
Other carbon calculators:
Bonneville Environmental Foundation: http://www.greentagsusa.org/greentags/calculator/
Global Action Plan (UK): http://www.carboncalculator.com/
World Resources Institute: http://www.safeclimate.net/calculator/
StopGlobalWarming.org: http://www.stopglobalwarming.org/carboncalculator.asp
and lots of others (just google “carbon calculator”)
Other interesting sites:
http://www.mycarbonfootprint.eu/ -- this is a long list of personal actions for reducing your carbon footprints, each with an explanation of how it’s calculated. Unfortunately it’s European data and assumptions, so not directly usable for us.
EPA: http://www.epa.gov/cleanrgy/powerprofiler.htm -- this gives zipcode-specific analysis of your electric power consumption and emissions.