This is the second in 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, Little Downham, which includes Pymoor – if you want to check the estimator for yourself, you’ll need to enter ‘Downham’ as the parish name. The parish generates around four per cent of East Cambridgeshire’s total carbon emissions. But per person, it generates 35.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year – forty per cent more than the East Cambridgeshire average. Like its smaller neighbour, Coveney, that’s because as a rural community a significant portion of its emissions are from land use and agriculture. But its housing contributes less carbon per person than Coveney, and road transport contributes more.

What about consumption – emissions including all the things we buy and use, like food, clothing, heating and transport? That’s 20.6 tonnes per person per year – rather less than in Coveney. And again like Coveney, higher than the East Cambridgeshire average of 18.4 tonnes – but only slightly so. The cause is more generally spread, with each item in the list below slightly higher than the East Cambridgeshire average.

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