March 10, 2008 -- A new Internet-based carbon calculator is designed to help not only individuals, but also entire cities, get more control of their carbon emissions.
In addition to the standard, big-ticket carbon-emitting activities like driving and heating or cooling a house, the CoolClimate Calculator also factors in such things as how many miles you fly each year, what sorts of foods you eat, and where you live.
The calculator is also adaptable, say its designers, so that states, counties and cities can tailor it to make their own calculators that better reflect local lifestyles, climate and alternative energy options.
"There are a lot of carbon calculators out there," said Chris Jones, who developed the CoolClimate Calculator for the University of California at Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and the Berkeley Institute of the Environment. But few of those other calculators capture everything people do to emit carbon compounds from fossil fuel burning, he said.
The new calculator, in comparison, goes so far as to ask users where they live, since local and regional climate have a huge effect on how much heating and cooling you do in your home.
"We were able to incorporate these types of data," said Jones. "We know the consumption habits of the top 28 metropolitan areas." And in wider areas the calculator applies regional averages.
Another thing that will soon be added to the calculator is a way to account for any carbon offsets -- those investments many people are making in clean energy that can be counted as carbon credits.
"This is part of an ongoing project that's really going to heat up this summer," Jones said.
The California Air Resources Board has already announced it has used the Cool Climate Calculator to develop a Cool California Calculator that better reflects parts of that state.
Besides just helping people see where they stand, another goal of the calculator is to help people see how everything they spend money on can affect carbon emissions, Jones told Discovery News. The calculator can help people avoid the common trap, for instance, of cutting emissions in one part of their lives while accidentally raising it in others, he said.
For instance, said Jones, a family might cut their electricity consumption with lower-wattage lights and energy-efficient appliances, but then spend the money they saved on more energy-intensive foods, like meats and foods shipped from distant places.
"Reducing consumption is not necessarily the answer," said Jones. "We need to think of substitution." In other words, eat more vegetables than meat, buy local foods and heat with natural gas instead of electricity or oil.
Some people also see the calculator as part of the missing clean-energy link between governments and their citizens.
"The dirty little secret (among cities) is that a lot of these goals can't be met," said Paul Lussier, a policy and media consultant who is working on connecting cities to citizens. The only way cities can do it is if they are doing it with citizens who are keeping track of their own carbon emissions, he said.
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