Foundation For Common Land Carbon Calculator

Technical Issues

• What information do I need to get started?

  In order to be able to account for the common in the calculator you will need to know the total size of the common, its location and a few details about the habitats present. The details on the land use type and habitats may come from a stewardship scheme, mapping or from existing knowledge. 

   

• Why is carbon footprinting in upland environments different?

  We have been thrilled to work with the Foundation for Common Land to provide this upland version of the Farm Carbon Calculator which will better reflect the upland environment.

  Due to the uniqueness of the farming systems and environments that exist in the uplands, it is important to ensure that this is reflected in measurement tools. One key consideration was how to account for carbon on commons, and the calculator now provides a way to do this.

• How does it take into peat into account?

  Understanding the carbon dynamics of peatland is a complicated process that is ever-changing for land managers and farmers. Historically, peat soils and habitats have been understood as a carbon store, with peat itself being of extremely high carbon content. However, in the process of carbon footprinting it is important to understand all greenhouse gases associated with peatland: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide and how the use of the peatland affects each of these.

  Please use the resource

• Confidence levels

  In the Report you will see a reference to Confidence Levels in the results. This refers to how much confidence we have in the actual figures produced by the Calculator for each item, on a range from 1 to 3, where:

  1 - lower confidence

  2- medium

  3 - high confidence

  This is because some items are inherently far more reliable and understood than others. For instance, diesel or electricity is high confidence - you know how much you've used and therefore the calculation for what the emissions are is quite mathematical.

  Conversely emissions from compost, or sequestration in hedgerows are difficult to be accurate with because they are biological and therefore there are a lot of variables.

  We therefore have the Confidence levels to give transparency. Please bear in mind however that every emissions/sequestration factor is backed up by firm science and we aim to provide the most accurate figures available.

• What is the methodology?

  Behind the Calculator lies a robust and detailed structure to calculate the carbon emissions and sequestration factors that ultimately give you a Carbon Report.

  We have outlined what methodology we follow and how Standards structure our work in the following documents and give an overview of how the calculations behind the Calculator work and references upon which they are based:

  Download our Calculator Methodology (PDF, 2.14MB) Download our references (PDF, 76KB)

• How long will it take?

  This depends on how complex your business is and how organised your records are! The longest part is collating your data in the first place, which could take anything from two or three hours to a whole day. However, once you know where to get the data needed, subsequent times are much quicker.

  Filling in data to the Calculator itself is straight forward once you have the necessary data, between around 30 mins and 2 hours.