Last updated: 24 July 2023 at 15:44
Currently there are no Createch specific calculators available, but there are several that can be used capture basic information needed to start to manage your greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and CO2 specifically. Here is a selection of relevant calculators:
License: Free to use
Description: An easy-to-use tool that allows you to work with others to calculate the carbon footprint of a small business or charity.
URL: https://360carbon.org/en-gb/
Best For: Any small business
Title: AdGreen Carbon Calculator
License: Proprietary
Description: The AdGreen Carbon Calculator allows you to work out the carbon footprint of motion, stills and audio projects within advertising campaigns so that you can assess the environmental impact of your production activities. The tool is free at the point of use for the advertising production community, thanks to contributions from participating advertisers to the AdGreen levy on production spend.
This bespoke tool, developed in collaboration with industry stakeholders, facilitates a collaborative environment for advertising and production teams. They can log their production activities and identify where adjustments can be made to decrease the carbon footprint of a project. Parent companies, production consultancies, and brands can also use the tool to examine and analyse the carbon footprints of all projects within their campaigns. In the future, this tool will have the capability to generate reports to guide larger, company-wide sustainability initiatives.
URL: https://weareadgreen.org/carbon-calculator
Best For: Advertising & Marketing
Title: Albert Carbon Calculator
License: Proprietary
Description: The toolkit comprises of a carbon calculator and Carbon Action Plan. The calculator allows you to work out the carbon footprint of your production, enabling you to see the impact of your production. The Carbon Action Plan is designed for those productions who not only want to measure their carbon footprint but actively take steps towards reducing it.
URL: https://wearealbert.org/carbon-calculator-and-production-certification/
Best For: TV & Film
Title: Arts Carbon
License: Open Source
Description: This project is developed by Vijay Mathew and Axess Lab and is based on the article Streaming in the Just Transition: A Producer’s Guide to Measuring, Budgeting, and Lowering the Carbon Emissions of Livestreams and Video Conferences by Vijay Mathew. The calculations are based on Version 3 of the Website Carbon Calculator.
This tool is an open-source project and so there is a community seeking to improve it (the code is on GitLab).
Best For: Streaming Media
Title: Cloud Carbon Footprint
License: Open Source
Description: Application that estimates the energy and carbon emissions of public cloud providers. It measures cloud carbon and is intended to connect with various cloud service providers. It provides estimates for both energy consumption and carbon emissions for all types of cloud usage, including embodied emissions from production, with the option to drill down emissions by cloud provider, account, service, and time period.
URL: https://www.cloudcarbonfootprint.org
Best For: Any business
Title: CodeCarbon
License: Open Source
Description: Python package for tracking the carbon emissions produced by various computer programs, from simple algorithms to deep neural net- works. By taking into account computing infrastructure, location, usage and running time, CodeCarbon provides an estimate of how much CO2 has been produced.
Best For: Developers
Title: Creative Green Tools
License: Free to use
Description: Creative Green Tools, developed by Julie's Bicycle for the arts and culture sectors, are utilised by over 5,000 organizations in 50 countries around the world. These complimentary calculators enable organisations to record and understand their venue, office, tour, production, event, or festival's environmental and carbon impacts.
The Creative Green Tools simplify the process of measuring energy consumption, water usage, waste production and recycling, travel, and production materials. The insights derived from these measurements can then guide environmental strategies and set organisational priorities.
URL: https://juliesbicycle.com/our-work/creative-green/creative-green-tools/
Best For: Arts Organisations (but has wider applicability for any creative business)
Title: Creative Scotland
License: Free to use with limitations
Description: Four spreadsheet-based tools to allow organisations to integrate emissions recording and planning work. These tools, intended exclusively for internal use are not designed for submitting Carbon Management Plans (CMPs) or emissions reports to funders. They are updated with the most recent carbon emissions conversion factors as provided by the UK Government (BEIS) in 2022, and therefore comply with all UK planning and reporting regulations. The tools are:
- The Carbon Management Planning tool helps creatives to blend existing records with new planning efforts to identify and evaluate reduction projects, while monitoring emissions.
- The quick carbon management calculator rapidly computes the emissions of certain actions aimed at decreasing energy, travel, waste, and water usage. It also provides a guide to typical equipment use.
- The CMP summary tool is useful for collating the costs and emissions savings that result from reduction projects over a three-year CMP period.
- Lastly, the carbon budget calculator allows an organisation to leverage its current carbon footprint to plot a path towards achieving net zero emissions.
URL: https://www.creativecarbonscotland.com/carbon-management/tools-and-resources/
Best For: Arts Organisations (but has wider applicability for any creative business)
Title: CTI Tool
License: Free to use
Description: The Circular Transition Indicators (CTI) Tool was designed to aid businesses across various global industries in tracking and enhancing their circular performance. It facilitates and guides companies throughout the CTI process.
By structuring data and computing results, the CTI Tool assists businesses in implementing tangible steps to achieve their circularity objectives. Moreover, it helps users in communicating with internal stakeholders and partners within the value chain to solicit necessary data while avoiding confidentiality concerns.
URL: https://circular-iq.com/#CTITool
Best For: Any business
Title: DIMPACT
License:
Description: DIMPACT is a collaborative project, convened by Carnstone, with researchers from the University of Bristol and twenty-three media and technology companies. Currently a work in progress, the project aims to develop an online tool that takes the complexity out of calculating the carbon emissions of the downstream value chain of digital media content, including complex scenarios where streaming is involved.
URL: https://dimpact.org/about
Best For: Streaming Media
Title: Earth Sage (formerly Spherics)
License: Proprietary
Description: An established carbon accounting software platform that is underpinned by standards based on the the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
Best For: Any business
Title: eco2AI
License: Open Source
Description: The Eco2AI is a python library for CO2 emission tracking. It monitors energy consumption of CPU & GPU devices and estimates equivalent carbon emissions taking into account the regional emission coefficient.
URL: https://pypi.org/project/eco2ai/
Best For: Developers
Title: Ecologi
License: Proprietary (but Carbon Calculator Free to Use)
Description: Ecologi is a platform dedicated to addressing climate change by enabling businesses and individuals to offset their carbon footprints. The suite includes four primary tools:
- Climate Positive Workforce®: This tool allows companies to offset the carbon emissions generated by their employees' daily lives, making each employee 'climate positive.' With this tool, businesses can calculate their carbon footprint, fund tree-planting and carbon reduction initiatives, and share their progress towards environmental sustainability.
- Ecologi Zero® BETA (Carbon calculator): This tool allows businesses and individuals to calculate their carbon footprint. This can include emissions from various sources like energy consumption, transportation, and waste generation. Users can then offset these emissions through various initiatives supported by Ecologi.
- Impact Shop: The Impact Shop enables users to directly fund specific environmental projects. These projects can range from renewable energy to biodiversity protection. This gives users an additional way to contribute to environmental sustainability beyond offsetting their own carbon footprint.
- Ecommerce & Integration: This tool offers integrations for e-commerce platforms that allow businesses to plant a tree with every sale or offset the carbon emissions generated by the production and shipping of their products. This can make the entire e-commerce process more environmentally friendly.
URL: https://ecologi.com/
Best For: Any business
Title: Eevery
License: Proprietary
Description: Sustainability and improvement platform with a scoring model specifically developed for SMEs. Starts with testing to objectively establish a starting point, based on globally accepted standards. The tool offers customised sustainability assessments based on sector and company size benchmarks. Performance reports are broken down into environmental, social and governance categories, and the contribution to each of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The tools data model and analytical capabilities are aligned with the EU Taxonomy, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the Corporate Sustainability and Responsibility Disclosure (CSRD), and the latest laws and regulations.
Best For: Any small business
Title: Experiment impact tracker
License: Open Source
Description: The experiment-impact-tracker is designed as an easy-to-implement method for monitoring your system's energy consumption, carbon emissions, and computing utilisation. Currently, it supports Linux systems with Intel chips and NVIDIA GPUs, and is capable of recording details such as power draw from CPU and GPU, key hardware specifics, Python package versions, and estimated carbon emissions.
For California-based users only, it provides real-time carbon emission data by fetching information from caiso.com.
Once the data is logged, an online report can be generated to display the gathered information. This software framework essentially offers insights into the energy, computational, and carbon implications of machine learning models. Key features include extraction of CPU and GPU hardware details, recording start and end times, and factoring in the energy grid region where the processing is taking place.
URL: https://github.com/Breakend/experiment-impact-tracker
Best For: Developers
Title: Flow and D-mat Music Festival Calculator
License:
Description: Flow and D-mat is developing a carbon and material footprint calculator for the event industry, thus helping the entire field to gain more information and decrease its emissions and impact on the environment.
Best For: Festivals & Events
Title: Game Studio Carbon Calculator by Neogames
License: Free to use
Description: Neogames Finland Association and The Finnish Game Developers’ Association (Suomen Pelinkehittäjät ry.) have developed a model to assist Finnish game companies in estimating their carbon footprint. This model harmonises the methodologies employed by premier Finnish game development studios to assess their emissions, integrating them with existing third-party online resources like Ilmastolaskuri provided by WWF Finland.
The model has recently been refined to include the carbon emissions of YouTube viewers, along with minor adjustments in language and figure updates.
Any company seeking to gain a better understanding of its carbon footprint can freely use this model. It accounts for emissions from various sources, such as game players, YouTube viewers, office energy use (including heating and cooling), waste production, purchases, remote work, and travel.
URL: https://playing4theplanet.org/resources
Best For: Games
Title: Green Algorithms
License: Open Source
Description: Online tool that enables the user to estimate and report the carbon footprint of computation. It integrates with computational processes and does not interfere with existing code, while also accounting for a range of CPUs, GPUs, cloud computing, local servers, and desktop computers
URL: http://calculator.green-algorithms.org and https://www.green-algorithms.org
Best For: Developers
Title: IBM Envizi ESG Suite
License: Proprietary
Description: Envizi’s suite of cloud-based, ESG software products work together in three ways:
- Build a Data Foundation by automating the collection and consolidation of more than 500 ESG data types into a single system of auditable, financial-grade data.
- Streamline Reporting and Disclosures with Envizi’s powerful emissions calculation engine and flexible reporting tools to meet strict internal and external requirements.
- Accelerate Decarbonisation by identifying energy and emissions savings opportunities and tracking progress at every stage of the journey.
URL: https://www.ibm.com/products/envizi
Best For: Any business
Title: Impala and Julie's Bicycle bespoke calculator for music industry
License: Membership
Description: The IMPALA Carbon Calculator is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporation Standard (GHG Protocol and is used to measure the following impacts across a music industry business:
- Office energy use, water and waste.
- Staff commuting and business travel.
- Manufacturing and distribution of products (e.g., vinyl).
- Purchased goods (e.g., IT and studio equipment).
The tool also has a heading, ‘Beyond Carbon’, which summarises recommended actions.
URL: https://www.impalamusic.org/carbon-calculator/
Best For: Music
Title: KlimActiv
License: Freemium
Description: In Germany, the MFG film fund in Baden-Würtemberg has commissioned KlimAktiv to create a carbon calculator for film and TV productions.
URL: https://event.co2ckpit.de/de_DE/
Best For: TV & Film
Title: LCA Calculator
License: Proprietary
Description: This specialist cloud-based Life Cycle Analysis software assists in analysing, and comparing the environmental impacts of different product designs and material choices. The software employs the internationally recognised EcoInvent database as a key data source.
URL: https://www.lcacalculator.com
Best For: Any business
Title: ML CO2 IMPACT
License:
Description: The tool allow a user to choose hardware, runtime and cloud provider to estimate the
carbon impact.
This calculator gives the raw carbon emissions produced and the approximate offset carbon emissions. The
latter number depends on the grid used by the cloud provider.
URL: https://mlco2.github.io/impact/
Best For: Developers
Title: Normative
License: Proprietary
Description: Normative is a carbon accounting engine that helps businesses measure exactly how much emissions they generate. Like in traditional accounting, Normative’s carbon accounting combines hard data and rigorous calculations to deliver reliable results. Normative’s calculations are used to identify emissions reduction opportunities, minimise climate risk, and find opportunities for growth in a net-zero economy.
URL: https://normative.io
Best For: Any business
Title: PGA Green Production Guide - CARBON FOOTPRINT CALCULATOR (PEAR)
License: Free to use with limitations
Description: The PEAR (Production Environmental Accounting Report) is a tool to measure the environmental impact of a production based on the energy used in offices and on stages, the fuel used in vehicles and generators, and the emissions from air travel and accommodations. The tool can also report on waste, donations, and other environmentally-impactful purchases like water bottles, plywood, and paper.
URL: https://www.greenproductionguide.com/tools/
Best For: TV & Film
Title: SimaPro
License: Proprietary
Description: SimaPro is an established Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool that has been in the market for about 30 years. It's primarily used for creating Life Cycle Assessments that comply with ISO standards (including ISO 14067 and 14040), as well as for producing Environmental Product Declarations and reports.
URL: https://www.simapro.co.uk/simapro
Best For: Any business
Title: SME Carbon Footprint Calculator
License: Free to use
Description: The Carbon Footprint Calculator has been designed to help UK based SMEs measure their corporate emission footprint following GHG Protocol Guidance, including direct emissions from fuel and processes (Scope 1 emissions) and those emissions from purchased electricity (or Scope 2 emissions) for the assets they operate.
Best For: Any small business
Title: SME Climate Hub
License: Free to use
Description: Used by UK Government's UK Business Climate Hub initiative to encourage companies to commit to net zero targets. Based on business profile and input data, creates a personalised dashboard with a detailed breakdown of current emissions.
URL: https://businessclimatehub.org/start-measuring/
Best For: Any business
Title: Sphera
License: Proprietary
Description: Best-In-Class Sustainability and ESG Reporting and Performance Management.
URL: https://sphera.com/product-sustainability-software/
Best For: Any business
Title: SWISS CO2-Calculator Film & Media
License: Free to use
Description: CO2 calculator records the emissions of film, media and TV production.
URL: https://www.green-shooting.ch/en_GB/
Best For: TV & Film
Title: UN Green Events tool
License: Freemium
Description: Green Events Tool (GET) is an integrated web-based assessment platform conceived and designed to evaluate the sustainability and environmental performance of events. It is developed, hosted and maintained by UNEP, the UNFCCC secretariat and the Gulf Organisation for Research & Development (GORD).
URL: https://greeneventstool.com
Best For: Events
Title: Website Carbon Calculator
License: Free to use with limitations
Description: The Website Carbon Calculator is a tool developed to estimate the carbon emissions of a website. It uses several data points including data transfer, energy intensity of web data, the energy source used by the data centre, carbon intensity of electricity, and website traffic. It considers factors such as the energy used to load the website, data centre and end-user energy usage, and the carbon intensity of grid electricity. The tool also checks whether the data centre is using green energy. By compiling all this information, the tool provides an estimate of the total annual CO2 emissions of a website.
URL: https://www.websitecarbon.com/how-does-it-work/
Best For: Developers
This information is brought to you by the Centre for Sustainable Design (CfSD) at the University for the Creative Arts in the UK. CfSD was established in 1995 in Farnham, Surrey, UK and is based within the Business School for the Creative Industries (BSCI). The Centre has led and participated in a range of high-quality research projects and has organised hundreds of conferences, workshops and training courses in Europe. CfSD works with partners in Europe, Asia, and North America to deliver high quality results.
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