Knowing the carbon footprint of your church, other buildings,  or your travel is an essential step in responding to climate change.

Knowing the carbon footprint will help you:

• Learn about the carbon emissions from your heating, lighting or appliances
• Check the different carbon emissions of travel by car, bus, train, or plane
• Give you an overall picture of your total carbon footprint and help you think about how you could reduce it.

Eco-Congregation Scotland introduced a carbon calculator onto its website in 2009 but it is now sadly out of date.  The reason is that the carbon footprint of electricity  has reduced  considerably over the years  as coal fired power stations across the UK have been replaced by renewables , especially wind power.  On line calculators have also become a lot more powerful land effective.

So we now recommend you use this on line calculator:  http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx

This will allow you to enter readings from the gas, electricity or oil bills for your church –  just use the ‘house’ page  which will work equally well for any church building. It also allows you to open an account where you can record your meter readings.

Have a go – see how you get on!