How we calculate your carbon

At PACE we think it is important that you know exactly how we have calculated your emissions. Understanding the extent of your emissions is not only a first important step in setting about reducing them, but is also critical in generating the transparency and trust that is required to sustain the carbon market.

Every person has a different emissions profile based on their lifestyle, the particular type of car they drive, the energy they use in their home, the particular airline that they fly with and even the weather encountered on their specific flights. In fact even your dietary preferences will affect the extent of your emissions. It is not possible to accommodate every permutation of each individual’s emissions, and so we have had to draw on some assumptions in setting up the carbon calculator that appears on this web-page.

To ensure that our assumptions provide credible estimates of your emissions we have looked at a wide range of on-line calculators, drawn on the best carbon projects submitted to the United Nations by different project developers, and included our own experience of appliances, travel and emissions in different countries. We have made clear national or continental distinctions based upon the different ways that countries generate energy and what we know about energy supply and demand in those countries. We use a number of key information sources to arrive at the figures for this website:

• For the United Kingdom (currently home to more carbon calculators than anywhere else), we use information from the UK Government’s DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), which is responsible for the UK’s approach to combating climate change
• For the United States, we use guidelines from the IEA (International Energy Agency) and the details of prices and trends from the United States Government Department of Energy 
• Information for mainland Europe was derived from the Eurostat Gas & Electricity Market Statistics (Feb 2008) and the European Commission Statistical Pocketbook for European Union’s energy and transport in figures (2007-8). 
• Much of our information for flights and households was verified against the data at the global listing of carbon calculators that can be found at http://hes.lbl.gov/hes/carbon-calculators.html as well as the UK Department for Environmental Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) guidelines to GHG conversion factors - http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/envrp/pdf/conversion-factors.pdf
  

We have also tried to consider the energy that is associated with the delivery of the gas, oil and electricity that is supplied to us, and the energy that is embedded in the goods and technologies that we use. Simply manufacturing a car or an aircraft, for example, is a greenhouse gas intensive process.  Transmitting electricity along a national grid also leads to the loss of energy before it reaches your home.  We have included some of these figures where they are likely to apply to most people, but we have not attempted to cover all embedded carbon costs.  (If you are worried about these types emissions, we suggest that you invest a little bit more in greenhouse gas reducing projects through this site, or drop us a mail to tell us how best to account for your specific concern).  

Please do contact us if you want more information on the assumptions used to calculate your specific off-set.  For now, our focus is on keeping things transparent, keeping your off-sets credible and making as big a dent in greenhouse gas emissions and poverty as we can.