How Cool is Your Congregation? Start HereTake the Interfaith Power and Light Carbon Footprint Quiz!

$10,000 in cash prizes available for congregations with the smallest carbon footprints!

Calculate your footprint now, make changes to reduce your footprint, and come back and measure your progress. You can come back as many times as you like to measure your reductions - simply download or print out your results each time. The contest has been extended. If your congregation wants to take part in the contest, you'll need to use the calculator to measure your carbon footprint between now and December 31st, 2008. You will need to complete all of the calculator questions, use the last 12 months of utility data and save copy of your answers and summary of results. Then come back around the same time next year, after you have made changes to lower your carbon footprint, and use the calculator again. The sooner you make changes, the more time you will have to lower your carbon footprint. There will be two awards -- one for the lowest carbon emissions per congregant and one for the biggest overall carbon reductions.

Contest details

$5,000 for the congregation with the lowest overall emissions per congregant
$5,000 for the biggest carbon loser - the congregation that has shrunk its footprint the most

Our Cool Congregations Calculator

Use our Cool Congregations Calculator to estimate your congregation's carbon footprint. It offers a snapshot of your carbon footprint, allowing you to look at the best places to lower your footprint and become more energy smart. We break your carbon footprint down into four sub-components:

• Energy use: we estimate the carbon emissions from your congregation's use of electricity, natural gas and other fuels.
• Transportation: carbon emissions from congregations and staff travel.
• Goods and services: carbon emissions associated with food, office products, cleaning products, and everything else your congregation purchases.
• Waste: emissions from landfill waste (mainly methane) converted into carbon equivalent units.

Then we give credit for lands your congregation may manage in their natural state as carbon sinks and for any carbon offsets your congregation has purchased.

We provide your congregation's total footprint in both pounds of carbon and in acres.

Why Acres?

The vast majority of energy we use today is derived from the burning of fossil fuels such as oil, natural gas, and coal. Our carbon footprint measures how much carbon we put into the atmosphere through various activities such as driving. The carbon footprint, however, can be expressed in other ways that are more useful and more consistent with the original ecological footprint concept: the area of the Earth’s surface needed to absorb those emissions. On average, it takes roughly 41 acres to absorb one ton of carbon emissions. Other gases that contribute to global warming – namely methane from waste – are converted into "carbon equivalent" units then added to the carbon footprint.

The current congregation leader’s results are shown to the right.