Local Authority Package

Climate Checks

The Climate Check aims to stimulate reductions in carbon emissions from a wide range of actions by households.

It works in much the same way as the well established Home Energy Check, but asks the householder a wider range of questions covering all aspects of their lifestyle that have an ecological and carbon emission impact. The result is an ‘ecological footprint’ as well as a carbon emission figure for the household, plus a personal, and crucially – locally focused advice pack to show them how to improve their footprint score and decrease their household emissions.

Ecological footprinting

Ecological footprinting is now a well-established concept for measuring the sustainability of individuals and populations. The method calculates how much productive land and sea is needed to feed us and provide all the energy, water and materials we use in our everyday lives. It also calculates the emissions generated from the fossil fuel we use, and it determines how much land is required to absorb our waste. The footprint is expressed in terms of the number of planets we would need to sustain our lifestyle if everyone lived in the same way as us. It has been further developed by award winning consultants Best Foot Forward (BFF) to create the ‘Personal Stepwise’ tool and this is the basis for the Climate Check.

Climate Checks could also be completed online but we believe that by making them available as a paper based, scannable form, they can be mailed or otherwise distributed to large numbers of households in a local authority area and get a higher response rate. The completed and returned Climate Check is scanned to generate an individual result and advice pack for the household and a compiled data report for your authority - a valuable measure of progress against targets in your Climate Change Strategy

As well as information on how different actions would affect the household’s ecological footprint, the advice pack will include details of any possible financial savings. Locally focused advice might include links to energy efficiency and renewable energy discount schemes and grants, cycling or walking initiatives, farmers markets, water butt offers, kerbside recycling schemes, and local suppliers of greener goods and services in the area.

Climate Checks are still at the development stage. We need a number of pioneering local authorities to pilot the idea. Please contact us to discuss.