The Church and the Environment
Ten Steps Towards a
Carbon Neutral Church

(You don’t have to do them in this order!)

Last revised, 24th October 2005

1. Get your Church Council to agree:
(a) That Christians should be concerned about climate change.
(b) That the church has a ‘duty of care’ to think globally and act locally on this issue.
(c) To nominate a particular person to promote these Ten Steps within the church.

2. Measure your church’s ‘carbon footprint’.

3. Call the Energy Savings Trust on (0800) 512012, to ask for their advice on ways in which your church’s energy consumption (and its energy bills!) could be reduced.

4. Install low-energy light bulbs. Put a sign beside light switches, asking people to turn them off when not in use.

5. Turn the heating thermostat down by 1°C. Reduce the amount of time that the heating is on each Sunday by 15 minutes.

6. Encourage people to share transport. Work out who travels from where, and put people in touch with each other.

7. Encourage individual church members to measure and reduce their own 'carbon footprint'. Get them to sign up for Christian Ecology Link’s ‘Operation Noah’ campaign. For more information call (01949) 861516 or visit www.christian-ecology.org.uk/noah.

8. Get the PCC to switch its electricity supplier to a source of green electricity. Visit or phone one of the following:
www.npower.com/greenelectricity, Tel. (0800) 316 3370
www.greenenergy.uk.com, Tel. (0845) 456 9550
www.good-energy.co.uk, Tel. (0845) 456 1640
www.greenelectricity.org, to compare various green electricity suppliers

9. Get your Church Council to agree to off-set the environmental cost of the church’s remaining carbon emissions by making a donation through the CarbonNeutral Campaign. Contact Charlie Henderson of the CarbonNeutral Campaign on Charlie@carbonneutralnewcastle.com or at (0191) 277 7149, or visit www.carbonneutralnewcastle.com.

10. Review these Ten Steps (especially No. 2) in a year's time.

A Simple Carbon Calculator

For use by the Church

From the four quarterly bills for each of the following types of energy use, calculate the annual consumption in kWh. Use the multipliers to calculate the associated CO2 emissions.

For a ‘typical’ Sunday (of course there’s no such thing, so you’ll have to use both imagination and common sense) determine the total number of miles travelled to and from church by members of the congregation, in each of categories (4) to (7). Use the multipliers to calculate the associated CO₂ emissions.

• The gathering of information at this stage can be seen as a problem. It is better seen as an opportunity for raising awareness within the local church of the significance of climate change.
• You could work with the young people in your church to do a survey.
• You could hand slips to people as they arrive at church, and collect them back as they leave.
• You should do the same for church groups which meet on a weekly, monthly or other regular basis.
• Don’t count people who travel as passengers in a car.
• Multiply the figures obtained by 52, 12 or as appropriate to determine the annual figure.

Add the amounts for each category from (1) to (7) to obtain a figure for your church’s ‘carbon footprint’ in terms of CO2 emissions (kg/year).

For use by individuals

Do your own calculations for categories (1) to (3) above. Divide each total by the number of people in your household.

Do your own calculations for the following categories.

Add the amounts for each category from (1) to (8) to obtain a figure for your ‘carbon footprint’ in terms of CO₂ emissions (kg/year). Compare your figure with the average ‘domestic’ figure of about 5,500kg/yr. (The total figure for the UK, including industry etc, is 11,000kg/yr per head of population.) In order to restrict atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to about one-and-a-half times those of the pre-Industrial Age, we need to reduce our emissions by 80% by 2050. Thus, we should be working towards an average ‘domestic’ figure of 1,100kg/yr.

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