After my earlier blog on energyhive I have been asked how CO2 output relates to electricity usage, especially when there are so many different types of power stations from nuclear, hydro-electric, gas and coal fired through to the newer cleaner technologies such as wind farms.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have published their guidelines on how to calculate CO2 emissions and in “Annex 3 – Converting from purchased electricity use to carbon dioxide equivalent emissions” is a table that contains the calculations for CO2 emissions per kWh consumed (Table 3c).
This document lays out how to calculate CO2 emissions covering most topics from car journeys to air travel and should be used by companies for their annual CO2 usage reporting.
The Grid Rolling Average currently to be used is 0.5416 kg CO2 per kWh.