The easy-to-use Energy Footprint Tool will tell your church what your "carbon footprint" is, based on the energy you use to heat and light your buildings.
Bishop Martin encourages all parishes in the diocese to use the tool, which will help set the benchmark to enable the Church of England reach its target of net zero carbon by 2030.
Over 3000 churches have already used the EFT (see Church Times), but so far only 9% of churches in the Diocese of Worcester.
It is available to all Church of England churches using the Online Parish Returns System. This tool is live now, for working out 2019's carbon footprint, and remains open until end Sep 2020. In October, it will close for this year, and then reopen early in 2021 for churches to calculate 2020's carbon footprint.
This video, produced by the Diocese of Manchester talks you through the process.
The system uses the information we already hold about your church to populate your answers.
This means churches will only be asked for a small amount of additional information. You will need to have the whole of last year's electricity and gas/oil bills.
The Energy Footprint Tool will tell your church the amount of carbon produced annually by heating and lighting your church buildings. There are two useful graphs which show you your efficiency scores: one for energy efficiency based on building size and one for attendance. It can take account of separate buildings such as church halls, as long as you have the utility bills for them.
The tool will also offer some helpful tips to reduce your carbon emissions. Using the tool each year will help you to track the impact of the different steps you are taking to reduce your carbon footprint.
If you would like to know more, please get in touch with Sam Nunney from Research and Statistics. sam.nunney@churchofengland.org
The Energy Footprint Tool was created by the Church of England Research and Statistics Team in response to the call from General Synod in Feb 2019 to be able to measure the carbon footprint of the Church. It is a key step towards meeting our goal to cut our emissions, and play our role in responding to the climate crisis.
