Calculating your carbon footprint

Download the Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool to help record and calculate the carbon footprint of your digital preservation activities.

•  Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool– Excel spreadsheet (current version v1.0)

The DPC’s Carbon Footprint Task Force has developed an Excel-based spreadsheet tool to help you to calculate your carbon footprint. The tool is aligned with the generic service map described in Create a service map. The tool was built using the DIMPACT methodology. The methodology has been simplified for use by digital archives to estimate the impact of their own digital preservation activities.

Download a copy of the tool and look through the tabs of the spreadsheet to understand the kind of data you need to gather or estimate, and to plan how you will approach this exercise.

The spreadsheet tool can be a little daunting at first, but remember that you don’t need to think about everything at once. You may decide to focus on a certain area in the first instance and not fill out the whole template. Start small and build from there.

The following sections are designed to help you use the spreadsheet tool:

• Helpful tips for working with the Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool

• Gathering and entering your data

• Guidance on each of the sections of the spreadsheet

  • Summary

  • On Premise

  • In Cloud

  • Networking

  • Website use

  • Travel

  • Data and admin tabs

We are keen to provide practical guidance to help users of the toolkit understand and gather the necessary information. If you have tips and advice to share, or ideas to improve this guidance please do contact us at infoATdpconlineDOTorg.