This is the first of a series of posts about the ‘carbon footprint’ of the various parishes in the Sutton division. It uses https://impact-tool.org.uk/ which is a parish-level carbon emission estimator. This gives parishes and small communities usable data on their carbon emissions – the amount of carbon (or equivalent gases like methane) produced by our activities.

The https://impact-tool.org.uk/ estimator shows carbon emissions in two ways.

• Territorial emissions are those directly produced by the parish – its buildings, transport, land, and other amenities.
• Consumption emissions include the carbon from the things we buy and use which are brought into the parish from elsewhere.

The website also shows carbon emissions for each of those two options in total, and also per household. You can also compare parishes with other parishes in the area, with the district council average, and with the national average.

So, Coveney – one of our smallest parishes, which includes Wardy Hill and Way Head. Because it’s so small, it generates only one per cent of East Cambridgeshire’s total carbon emissions. But per person, it generates 54.6 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year – twice the East Cambridgeshire average. That’s because as a rural community nearly two thirds of its emissions are from land use and agriculture.

What about consumption – emissions including all the things we buy and use, like food, clothing, heating and transport? That’s 26 tonnes per person per year in Coveney. Again higher than the East Cambridgeshire average of 18.4 tonnes – but nothing like double. And that difference is mostly due to the high emissions from heating homes in Coveney and Wardy Hill, which is double the East Cambridgeshire average.

For more information about these calculations and how they work, visit https://impact-tool.org.uk/using-the-tool