Free Carbon Business Calculator Available
TerraPass™ (http://www.terrapass.com)
recently unveiled its Carbon Balanced Business Program, which is
designed to help businesses balance out the carbon emissions created
from their daily operations. This program gives businesses the
opportunity to use an online calculator to determine their carbon
footprints. Just as with the group's Road, Home and Flight calculators,
the Carbon Balanced Business program offers free carbon calculator
access with no registration required.
TerraPass, now
headquartered in San Francisco, Calif., is the brainchild of Karl
Ulrich, PhD., of the University of Pennsylvania. Along with 41 of his
students, Ulrich launched the initial program in October, 2004 as a way
to help everyday people reduce the climate impact of their driving.
The business calculator considers five aspects of a typical
organization's carbon footprint: on-site energy use, off-site server
energy use, company vehicles, business travel and employee commutes.
The calculator guides business owners or employees through each of
these areas, detailing what information is needed for the calculations
and displaying each category's emissions in a bar chart.
This
latest program is being launched with a group of businesses that
represent a range of companies committed to the expansion of their
sustainability practices. This group includes Expedia Inc.,
Architectural Area Lighting Co. and Butterfield & Robinson Inc.
The carbon calculator is designed to be flexible and easy to use. For
example, if utility bill information is not accessible for the onsite
energy usage category, TerraPass can make estimates based on average
cost or even square footage of office space. Employee commute and
business travel data is based on averages in selected travel modes for
each employee.
All of TerraPass emissions calculations are based on the World Resources Institute (WRI) Greenhouse Gas Protocol.