360°carbon

In partnership with Climate Stewards, A Rocha offers a carbon calculator designed for NZ churches and charities to help support efforts to reduce carbon emissions.

We have been working with Climate Stewards to provide a carbon calculator for churches that reflects the NZ context and uses NZ emission factors. Unlike other carbon calculators that are often focused around individuals, households or businesses, the church carbon calculator specifically takes into account the church environment and questions are framed so that users will find it fit for a church’s context.

If your church is interested in 360°carbon, contact us to find out more and let us help you begin the journey to understand, calculate, reduce and offset emissions for your church. Churches will need to join the Eco Church NZ network to access personalised 360°carbon support and guidance.

To set up an account with 360°carbon click here.

You can also download the presentation slides about 360°carbon that we presented in our Eco Church Kōrero.

What are the steps to calculate a church’s carbon footprint?

Here are the high-level steps you’ll want to take to calculate a carbon footprint for your church:

  • Form a team: Your church needs to form a team of staff and/or volunteers that take this project on as their responsibility. If you already have a creation care or “eco” team, you can start there. You will likely need access to church energy bills and accounts, so having someone from your church administration involved would be very helpful.

  • Determine boundaries: For what purpose is your church calculating its carbon footprint? In answering this question you can determine what gets included or excluded in the calculations. You will want to think about this upfront so a consistent approach is used in future years so progress can be measured. Your boundary may be constrained by what data you have available. That’s ok! Start with what you have.

  • Gather and input data: The 360°carbon calculator gives you flexibility on which emission sources you wish to track. You can decide to only track one category or go as in-depth as you like. You can track your church’s emissions from energy use, working from home, travel, food and drink, waste and water, and expenditure.

What next?

Once you have gathered and entered the data into the 360°carbon calculator you will have calculated an annual carbon footprint for your church! This can serve as a baseline for setting emission reduction goals and help inform creation care goals and priorities throughout the life of your church.

Consider how you might engage your congregation in the 360°carbon process. The results of the carbon footprint can be a great conversation starter for eco church activities and goals within your community.

Some next steps to consider:

  • Set goal(s) and reduction pathways together as a community.

  • Start with areas where changes can be made quickly.

  • Some progress no matter how small is key.

  • Celebrate your successes and share your stories!

Here are some action ideas for emissions reduction:

  • Energy: Establish end of day routine (turn off appliances, lights)

  • Travel: Set aside a Sunday or church season to focus on low carbon travel options to/from church.

  • Food: Encourage vegetarian/vegan shared meals.

You can also consider going carbon neutral as a church. There are two steps to this:

  • Reducing emissions as far as possible.

  • Offset the remaining emissions.

    • Climate Stewards offer offsetting options through their project partners - this is a way your church can contribute to climate justice as these projects are linked to wider Sustainable Development Goals and also bring benefits to communities in the majority world alongside mitigating carbon.

360°carbon calculator FAQs

  • The 360°carbon calculator is tailored for the church context and has been adapted for the Aotearoa New Zealand context.

    The calculator includes:

    • A section on consumption of food to reflect hospitality’s place in church life.

    • Emissions associated with working from home to cover any staff working from home.

    • A section on expenditure for those churches who wish to have a fuller picture of their overall footprint (for example office paper, printers, computers, internet usage, audio and visual services, maintenance, cleaning supplies, etc.).

    • The ability to fill in and report on particular sections that a church wants to focus on or has data for without having to fill all sections of the calculator.

    Calculations can be made and stored all in one place - you do not have to go off and use a separate tool to calculate additional emission sources like food as is the case for other calculators on offer.

    The calculator is using the latest publicly available New Zealand specific emission factors.

  • The 360°carbon calculator has been developed in partnership with Climate Stewards who are experienced in developing carbon calculators for churches and not-for-profit organisations in the UK, The Netherlands and the USA. The calculator uses the latest publicly available New Zealand specific emission factors. There is a User Guide available with the calculator that details the approaches used to calculate each type of emissions source.

  • The great thing about the 360°carbon calculator is the ability to calculate and track your emissions for individual sections so you don’t require data for all sections to get started. We suggest you concentrate on the emission sources that are likely to be the biggest and where emission reduction strategies can be targeted - energy, transport and food are good options to get started with.

  • Congratulations! Knowing your baseline is a great starting point for action. A PDF summary report of your emission profile is available to download from the 360°carbon calculator summary page. You can use this report to share with your leadership team to discuss setting an emissions reduction goal and pathway.

    • Set goal(s) and reductions pathways together as a community.

    • Start with areas where changes can be made quickly.

    • Some progress no matter how small is key.

    • Celebrate your successes and share your stories!

  • Offsetting shouldn't be the solution to climate change but it can play an important part in the transition to a low carbon society. Climate Stewards invites us to ‘reduce what you can and offset the rest’

    You can read about Climate Steward offsetting projects here.

    There are other ways to support the transition to a lower carbon lifestyle too including advocacy and participation in engagements and submissions at a local and national government level. As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres says “our world needs climate action on all fronts - now. Everything. Everywhere. All at once.”

  • Currently the 360°carbon calculator is set up for calculating emissions associated with an organisation’s operations during the year. If you are interested in an event calculator do let us know.

  • We understand churches and church organisations can have limited time/resources for this work. Get in touch with us and we can discuss what we can do to help support you on your emissions reduction journey.

 A Rocha’s 360°carbon and emissions reduction initiatives have received funding support from:

  • Wellington City Council Climate and Sustainability Fund 2022

  • Auckland Council Climate Fund 2023

  • Christchurch City Council Sustainability Fund 2023