Beech Parish Council

Hampshire England

E: clerk@beechpc.com

Self Assessment

 

Click here to see the results of the survey: 2022 Home Energy Self Assessment

How to get to net zero?

  1. UNDERSTAND: The first step to reducing your CO2 emissions is to understand the how much CO2 is emitted by your day to day activities:
    1. Use one of the many CO2 self assessment tools.
      • Be aware that these tools will lead you into thinking about Carbon Offsetting which is an unregulated area!
    2. Or, use your home energy bills to calculate the home energy CO2 emissions
  2. COMPARE: We want each household to share their annual home energy CO2 emissions so we can compare and track progress.
  3. TAKE ACTION: The next step is to identify and prioritise potential actions to reduce CO2 emissions
    1. We have decided to initially focus on Home energy consumption (which is mainly about home heating!).
    2. We picked this area as it is the largest area for the average Beech household and we believe there are actions we can all take to reduce our CO2 emissions in the short term
    3. Here is the link to our Home Energy Action page which include links to related information sources on how you can plan specific actions and look for ways to fund them

Self assessment tools

There are a bewildering number of online self-assessment tools available!

The National Association of Local Councils produced a report in 2020 that reviewed 13 different tools that are available in the UK:

https://www.nalc.gov.uk/library/our-work/climate-change/3305-online-carbon-calculators-in-uk-an-evaluation-report

They vary in their ease of use, the ‘depth’ or granularity of detail you can provide and the ability and type of actions you can model to see how you can improve.

So, which tool should you use?

The Climate Action Working Group tried several tools including:

GIKI zero

Carbonfootprint

WWF

ClimateHero

We found that they vary in how easy they are to use, the depth of analysis, the opportunity to make plans and also in the actual numbers they produced. We can’t recommend one as it does depend on what level of detail you want to go into, how easy the tools need to be and many other factors.

BUT, we can recommend that you use a self-assessment tool and:

  1. Try to enter as much detail as you can eg your annual energy consumption
  2. Reflect on some realistic goals for the coming year
  3. Review again at the start of next year

How to calculate home energy CO2 emissions.

Use the table below to convert your energy usage in kWh into an estimate of you CO2e kg. 

Energy source

Multiply by this number to derive CO2e kg

Source: UK government (1)

Electricity

0.193 per kWH

Natural Gas

0.203 per kWh  (includes transmission loss)

Bottled gas

3.68 kg CO2 per kg of bottled gas (2)

Oil

3.18 per litre of oil

Coal

2.88 per kg of coal

Wood

0.10 per kg of wood

Notes:

  1. Source UK government Conversion Factors
    • The UK electricity factor is prone to fluctuate from year to year as the fuel mix consumed in UK power stations (and auto-generators) and the proportion of net imported electricity changes.
    • We recommend you use the government factors to calculate your CO2 emissions as these are based on the actual mix of renewables and non renewables in power generation 
    • Many power suppliers state that the energy they supply is fully renewable. We would refer you to the detailed article by the Consumers Association on the ‘Differences between green energy suppliers‘
  2. See Carbonindependent