The calculation uses emissions factors valid for Switzerland. These emissions factors vary a lot from one country to another. If you wish to adapt the calculator to another country/department oversea and know to whom you should address to do so, please contact us.

Yes, but since your work produces goods and services that others consume, it wouldn’t be fair to attribute these emissions to you only. Emissions that result from professional activity – offices or commercial surfaces heating, professional travel, etc. – of all the country’s actives are taken into account globally in the emissions due to public and private consumption as follows: they are allocated as a lump figure to each person for public consumption and according to the purchase of goods and services for private consumption.

For a person. You should however indicate how many live in your household. We need this information to divide the global habitat consumption (heating and electricity) by this number.

The only simple solution for all of those who use an unusual equipment is to enter their exact heating and electricity consumption. You must chose the option “Known Value” in the sections of the calculator dedicated to heating and electricity and not the option “Approximate consumption”. And if you have a mix system, for example wood-gas or solar-gas, enter only your gas consumption, as it’s by far your heating system’s main source of greenhouse gas emissions.

Yes. For example, we take into account the emissions a product brought in Switzerland or in France generated during its fabrication even when it was imported. Equally, we add the emissions due to plane traffic. This explains why this calculator’s figures differ a great deal from the official figures claimed for instance during the climate negotiations.

The society KlimAktiv gemeinnützige Gesellschaft zur Förderung des Klimaschutzes GmbH conceived the calculator’s original version. It associates user simplicity, reliability and relative accuracy. That’s why the WWF Germany, the German Federal Office of the Environment and several German cities and Landers (Fribourg-in-Brisgau, Bavaria, etc.) use it. Esu-services provides the Swiss emissions factors which correspond to the most recent estimations of the Federal Office of the Environment (Entwicklung der weltweiten Umweltasuwirkungen der Schweiz, Bafu, 2014).