EPA's Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator

This is a handy calculator for generating the GHG data for various energy inputs, say 100 gallons of gasoline, 50 passenger cars, or 250 KW of electricity.

For instance the results of 100 gallons of gas burned is the equivalent of:

• CO₂ emissions from 2.1 barrels of oil consumed,
• Carbon sequestered annually by 0.19 acres of pine or fir forests,
• CO₂ emissions from burning 0.005 railcars’ worth of coal,
• Greenhouse gas emissions avoided by recycling 0.31 tons of waste instead of sending it to the landfill.

And the list goes on...you get the idea.

EPA's GHG Equivilency Tool

Economic Input/Output LCA

This is a quick and dirty LCA tool for calculating the emissions hot spots for a general category of products, say small appliances or footware. Created by CarnegieMellon, with a vast data base behind it, it uses the cost of the goods produced to generate a footprint based on averages. In contrast to a full LCA, which depends on specific material and location information to calculate exact LCA's, the results of the EIO-LCA are generic at best. Despite being a bit clumsy, this tool does a fairly good job of delivering basic information for identifying product life cycle hot spots.

Some tips for using it:

• Choose the correct model- purchaser dollars or producer dollars.
• If your exact product does not turn up in the search, try the drop down menus for categories and sub categories.
• Make sure you have checked the appropriate "category of results"- i.e. GHG, Water, etc.
• If you want to see the full spectrum of impact sectors you can download the complete data.
• If you want to see the data in percentages rather than metric tons, click the view graph button.

Here is the example for footwear

Try out CarnegieMellon's EIO-LCA tool