Personal Annual Carbon Allowance

RenSMART is dedicated to helping mitigate accelerated climate change due to human factors. Three measures are required to reduce our cabon intensity to a level where temperature rises can be kept with safe limits. Firstly a measure of where we are now, secondly a measure of where we should be and finally a measure of the improvment delivered by the life choices we make.

To enable the second measure, where we should be, we are introducing the PACA (Personal Annual Carbon Allowance). A voluntary target for indivuduals to attempt to attain through actions they choose to take.

1 PACA (for 2021) = 4660 kg CO₂ per person per year.

RenSMART will use the PACA as a measure throughout our site, applications and calculations, and make tools available for people to track their progress.

• dPACA (daily allowance) = 4660/365 = 12.8kg CO2 per day
• hPACA (hourly allocance) = 4660/(24*365) = 532g CO2 per hour (which is about 2kW if just electricity was the only source)

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Calculator

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The methdology

The methodology we have used is very simple. Take the amount of CO₂ due to humans that would keep us within a 2^o increase in global temperature and divide it by the world population.

In 2019 global CO₂e emmissions have been calculated at about 40Gt for the year.

By 2029 global CO₂e emmissions need to be reduced to 25Gt per year to restrict global warming to and increase of 1.5C. 1.5C is seen as a relatively safe level of warming.

To be on course to reach this target, emmissions need to be reduced to 38.5 Gt CO₂e per year by 2020.

Based on these figures:
• 2020 target = 38.5 GtCO₂e yr⁻¹
• 2020 World Population estimate 7.87 billion
• 38.5 Gt / 7.87 billion = 4.892 Gt = 4892 kg CO2 per year = 1 PACA

Sources

• Our spreadsheet calculations
• IPCC Special Report (D.1)
• Cop21 (II.17)
• Nature Climate