So You Want to Calculate Your Footprint? Quality of Online Carbon Calculators
A large number of online calculators have emerged over the last few years to help the general population determine their carbon footprint. The quality of information provided by these “carbon footprint calculators” varies greatly. While using a carbon calculator can be an important educational tool for the general public if helpful and accurate information is given, it can also deter people from making lifestyle choices that have the greatest impact on climate change if the information is unclear, inaccurate, or unrealistic. This paper evaluates the methodologies and feedback mechanisms behind a wide range of carbon calculators to illustrate and explain the reasoning for varied calculation results between calculators, looking at the transportation emissions in detail. The results of our analysis show that calculators are insufficiently transparent, in some cases providing inexplicable results. The authors suggest some basic information that should be readily available for any calculator and provide a summary of calculator effectiveness based on user feedback and depth/breadth of calculator algorithms.
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Corporate Authors:
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC United States 20001 -
Authors:
- Jones, Erica
- Niemeier, Debbie
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Conference:
- Transportation Research Board 88th Annual Meeting
- Location: Washington DC, United States
- Date: 2009-1-11 to 2009-1-15
- Date: 2009
Language
- English
Media Info
- Media Type: DVD
- Features: Figures; References; Tables;
- Pagination: 17p
- Monograph Title: TRB 88th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers DVD
Subject/Index Terms
- TRT Terms: Algorithms; Calculators; Carbon; Climate change; Exhaust gases; Pollutants
- Uncontrolled Terms: Choices; Ecological footprinting; Lifestyle
- Subject Areas: Environment; Highways; I15: Environment;
Filing Info
- Accession Number: 01126784
- Record Type: Publication
- Report/Paper Numbers: 09-1361
- Files: TRIS, TRB
- Created Date: Apr 17 2009 9:56AM