LCAG Carbon Calculator Webinar

To assist Livery companies in calculating their carbon footprint the original LCAG Guidance notes were based on utilising the calculation tools recommended by Heart of the City. This involved using 4 separate spreadsheet/calculators – The Climate Impact calculator, the H of C calculator, an LCAG data collection spreadsheet and the H of City Summary spreadsheet. Users asked if this could be rationalized into a single calculator. Also, the Climate Impact calculator gave very high emissions for hotel accommodation, significantly higher than the Defra GHG Conversion Factors spreadsheet and some users queried the small differential between meat and vegetarian meals using the Climate Impact calculator. It was not possible to see how the estimates were derived.

To address these issues, LCAG Executive member Rob Casey has produced a new Emissions Calculator which has:

1)    Combined all the original calculators/spreadsheets into a single spreadsheet, replacing the Climate Impact calculated emissions using factors from the Defra GHC Conversion Factors spreadsheet, plus incorporating the emissions factors and methodology from the Heart of the City calculator for the appropriate emissions.

2)    Using Defra GHG Conversion Factors has resolved the issue of very high emissions for hotel accommodation.

3)    Using the “My Emissions” comprehensive food emissions calculator has enabled us to derive estimated emissions for a typical Livery Hall meat and vegetarian dinner showing how it is made up with a link to the “My Emissions” website should users wish to tailor it for their specific company.

The new LCAG emissions calculator also offers greater visibility of how emissions are derived (with links to the various source websites in the calculator as checks on the emission factors used), greater flexibility in terms of the ability to alter emissions factors where appropriate, and greater simplicity in terms of data entry. In this webinar Rob will demonstrate the calculator and how to use it.