CO2 Calculation

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We welcome diversity and sing our differences in harmony, without fear.

How We Calculate CO2 Savings

The Cool Team relies on Acterra's expertise to calculate the CO2 savings of our actions. Acterra uses a few different sources for estimating CO2 savings for each of the Cool Campaign actions.

Acterra's Green@Home program provides data for several actions. Green@Home data was obtained by using several different Carbon Calculators (because no one calculator included all the challenges). Since each calculator makes different assumptions, the Green@Home program uses the average result.
The book "The Low-carbon Diet: Wise Up, Chill Out and Save the World" by Polly Ghazi and Rachel Lewis is also a source for some estimates.

Example Calculation: Even with the best energy data, assumptions must be made about each challenge. For example, when someone reports that they replaced an incandescent bulb with a CFL, we assume:

A 75 W incandescent bulb was replaced by an equivalent brightness CFL.
The light that was replaced is on 5 hours a day, 365 days a year.

CFLs use 25% the power of incandescent light bulbs, so the energy savings are:

.75 * (75 W) * (5 hrs/day) * (365 days/year) * (1 kW/100W) = 103 kWh/year. The City of Palo Alto Utility recommends using the California Climate Action Team's conversion data of 1.147 lbs CO2 / kWh. So for each light bulb changed, we save:

103 kWh/year * 1.147 lbs. CO2/kWh = 118 lbs. CO2/year

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Footer Last Revised: November 24, 2010

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