This is the fifth 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, Wentworth, one of the smallest villages in the Sutton division which generates just 0.68 per cent of East Cambridgeshire’s total carbon emissions. But per person, it packs a punch at 82.1 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year – more than three times higher than the East Cambridgeshire average of 25.6. Like Mepal, its largest single source of emissions is road transport, at nearly five times the per person average for East Cambridgeshire. Land use agriculture, industrial and commercial are also considerably higher.

What about consumption – emissions including all the things we buy and use, like food, clothing, heating and transport? That’s 21.8 tonnes per person per year in Wentworth, above the East Cambridgeshire average of 18.4. Every item on the list below is somewhat above the district average, other than waste which is marginally less.

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