Church Energy Footprint Tool

What is the energy footprint tool?

The Energy Footprint Tool (EFT) is a national Church of England tool for churches to record energy use and calculate their annual carbon emissions. The tool simply requires churches to enter information from their utility bills for the previous year in order to calculate their ‘carbon footprint'.

We strongly urge all churches to complete the tool which can be found on the Parish Returns system. If you need help logging in to the Parish Returns system, please contact Cordelia Sain-Ley-Berry-Gray.

The system uses information already held centrally about your church. This means that only a small amount of additional information is required. To complete the tool you will need to have the whole of last year’s electricity and gas/oil bills to hand.

The Energy Footprint Tool will tell your church how much carbon is produced annually through heating and lighting your church buildings. There are two useful graphs that show you your efficiency scores: one for energy efficiency based on building size, and one for attendance. It can take account of separate buildings, such as church halls, as long as you have separate utility bills for them.

How to use the EFT

Instructions on how to use the tool are here.

A video explaining how to use the tool is here:

Resources & Reports

Further information about the Energy Footprint Tool can be found on the Church of England Environment Programme web pages.

Why do we need the EFT?

The Diocese of Canterbury, with the Church of England, has a target to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030. In order to track progress, we need to measure the energy used in our various buildings (such as our churches and church halls). The EFT calculates the emissions resulting from the energy we’ve used in heating and lighting these buildings.