what is meant by carbon saving?
When we use energy – switching on heating or lights, driving cars, or even eating food, somewhere carbon burns to become carbon dioxide (often written as CO2). For example, CO2 can come from the coal or gas burnt in powerstations, the petrol in your car, from making the fertiliser used to grow your food and from the lorries transporting it. This carbon dioxide from people ‘doing things’ is one of the causes of climate change. Carbon dioxide traps heat from the Sun and so average temperatures rise as the concentration of carbon dioxide increases. So to reduce the effects of climate change in the future, we need to produce less carbon dioxide – to ‘use less carbon’. Some types of ‘carbon savings’ are easy to measure – eg. using your gas and electricity meter readings will show how much of these you use. Carbon savings that are less direct – eg. from car-sharing or composting – are more challenging to measure. During the prize we will work with experts to offer advice to competitors on wa
