Ask What You Can Do

From today, The Carbon Census has a new strapline - Ask what you can do.

Taken from the inaugural speech of President John F Kennedy (on 20 January 1961, exactly 50 years ago today) this phrase just seems to capture what we're trying to do with the Carbon Census. Ask not [what the politicians are ever going to do about climate change], ask what you can do!

And ask us, of course.

For more on JFK take a look at www.jfk50.org - and for more on uplifting public rhetoric, try watching this tribute video. Interesting cameo from a UK politician about half way through - can you guess which one? Well, we'd been wondering where he'd gotten to since May.

We are now a Social Enterprise

A couple of quick updates. First, our registration as a Social Enterprise is now official, under a scheme run for the Cabinet Office. Note the handsome new logo up above.

Second, a new design for the blog, just to ring the changes. You'll see we also now have proper "sharing" buttons on each post - to get this working, just hover over the word SHARE at the bottom of each post, and up will pop your options. Those with gmail can just click on the red "M" logo to send a link. OK, sorry if that was obvious - apparently this little gadget has been used 1 billion times already on the web.

So, onwards and upwards ... we will be relaunching co2census.com very shortly, more news on that soon.

Carbon Census Song

So here it is, the Carbon Census Song - our contribution to the Take One Small Step competition. If you'd like to support us click here to watch the 1 minute video and give us your vote. Many thanks to Joy Mills for putting this together.

How much CO2 can I save?

Well, here's the answer from all properties in the Carbon Census to date :

On average a UK household can save 2 - 6 tonnes of CO2 each year by implementing all of the measures identified in an official Energy Performance Certificate. About a third of the saving can be achieved with relatively cost effective measures - lighting, insulation, thermostats, heating system and so on - and about two thirds from more expensive improvements such as installing solar thermal hot water, solar panels or solid wall insulation. That said, solar panels are one of the more cost effective investments now that feed-in tariffs have been introduced. A typical installation saves about 1 tonne of CO2 per household per year.

Why the Carbon Census?

So, let's use our first post to answer the first question: why do we need a carbon census? The answer is easy: 27 million homes in the UK; 142 million tonnes of CO2; each of our homes is producing 5-6 tonnes of CO2 every year. That's just from using the gas and electricity that's piped into our homes every day. Altogether home energy use creates a quarter of all CO2 emissions in the UK, more than all road transport combined. It's a huge deal. We definitely need a census. The official emissions statistics are published here for those who are interested.