The Energy Footprint Tool 2022 open for churches to enter 2021 fuel and power use

The national Church of England Energy Footprint Tool (EFT) is now open for churches to enter their energy use from 2021.

Entries from 2021 have to be in by end of July 2022. That’s a bit sooner than in previous years, and it’s a hard deadline.  This will help the Church of England to report results from all over the country in good time before next year.

How to make your entries

Your entries can be made at Church of England Annual Parish Returns. You’ll need first to gather together:

• Names of your gas and electricity suppliers, and whether they supply 100% renewable energy or offset your consumption
• Utility bills for whole of 2021, and/or meter readings from the beginning and end of the year
• Bills for any purchases, including oil if you still use oil
• Other heating systems you may have eg heat pumps, capacity of your solar PV panels (if any), and units generated during the year.

The system is set up to give you A++ to G ratings for efficiency compared to the church’s size and how busy it is. You’ll need to enter:

• Size of the church and hall in square meters
• Estimates of numbers attending services and using the buildings at other times.

Don’t forget to enter data for your hall or other building(s) (if they’re separate), as well as the church.

You can also enter information about work-related travel.

For more information including an introductory video, see Energy Footprint Tool.

The story of EFT

This work is an essential part of caring for God’s Creation, by helping to combat global heating and climate change.

EFT first launched in 2020, for 2019 data.  This is now EFT’s third year. So we are building a better picture of how churches nationwide are saving energy and the resulting carbon emissions (known as CO₂e) which contribute to climate change.

The Diocese of London and the whole Church of England committed in 2020 to working towards reducing our carbon emissions to net zero by 2030. That means by then we should be taking out of the atmosphere, by means of tree planting and other offsetting, at least as much as we put into the air by burning gas or oil and from generation of the electricity we use.

To reach our net zero target we need first to make big cuts in energy use and buy renewable energy through 100% renewable tariffs, as well as installing solar panels and heat pumps wherever we can. Then we’ll need to offset what we’re not able to reduce.

The Diocese of London has been engaged in this vital effort since the 2000s; so we now have measurements for churches and halls in this diocese going back to 2005.  These measurements came from our old Shrinking the Footprint returns system, which was rolled into the new national system when it launched in 2020. The national system was based on the London Diocese’s system and uses the same formulae.

We therefore know that as of 2020, churches in this diocese had saved 21.7% of their annual energy use and 31.3% of their annual net carbon emissions (these figures were adjusted to allow for Covid lockdowns).

More details of these results can be found at Record low carbon emissions from London churches.

2020 was a record year. Let’s see if 2021 beat the 2020 record. That will help us boost our efforts right now to save even more energy and carbon in 2022!

Well done to all the parish staff and volunteers who are taking part in EFT by getting together their churches’ energy data and entering it each year.

More help and support

To help parishes use EFT, see:

• Introductory video and supporting notes
• Energy Footprint Tool instructions.

See also:

• Measuring your energy use
• Green energy suppliers
• Environment and Sustainability landing page.

For more help and support, contact our Head of Environment and Sustainability.