Tracking Tools, Calculators, and Other Resources
Wondering how you're doing in improving your sustainability? Want a way to track your savings? Want to estimate your potential savings if you make changes?.
There are a number of tools and resources that can help you measure and track your sustainability or see how much you could save with more efficient products or practices. As you start on your path to more sustainability, include one of the tracking or monitoring tools below as part of the undertaking. Some of these tools are designed for organizations or businesses, but might be helpful for you to use for your home or for non-profit organizations that you are affiliated with (e.g., Boys Club).
EPA specifically notes that it periodically updates its savings calculators. Thus, they encourage you to check back to make sure you have the most recent version. This is also likely true for other tools.
 General
No one calculator can provide a single, simple measure of your personal sustainability. You can, however, calculate your carbon footprint and see how the choices you make in your home, your travel, the food you eat, and what you buy and throw away contribute to the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change.
Energy—heating, cooling, and lighting
There are many on-line tools that can help you track the energy you currently use for heating, cooling, and lighting or calculate how much less you could use by making changes. Some do-it-yourself audits and other tools are described below.
TVA's Online Energy Audit
Complete TVA's online energy audit and you will receive an energy conservation kit from TVA filled with items to help you save energy and reduce your electric bill. The energy conservation kit includes two compact fluorescent light bulbs, outlet and light switch gaskets, a filter whistle, two faucet aerators, a hot water temperature gauge, a home thermometer, and a "How to Save" brochure. You'll also receive a free energy audit report to help you understand where your home is wasting energy and how you can fix those expensive leaks. This offer is open to residents of the Tennessee Valley served by TVA and local distributors of TVA power.
EPA's ENERGY STAR Home Energy Yardstick
With last year's utility bills and some basic information about your home (e.g., zip code, age, square footage, number of occupants), you can use the ENERGY STAR Home Energy Yardstick to quickly compare your home's energy efficiency to similar homes across the country and receive recommendations for energy-saving home improvements.
Energy Calculators and Software
DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy provides calculators and tools to help you evaluate your home's energy use and need for energy-efficient improvements. For example, you can calculate potential savings from replacing an old refrigerator with a new ENERGY STAR refrigerator. It also tells you the most economic insulation level for new or existing houses based on your zip code.
Energy Efficient Rehab Advisor
Incorporating energy efficiency into your renovation projects is a significant step toward achieving high performance housing (i.e., housing that is not only energy efficient, but also durable, sustainable, and healthy). The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's Energy Efficient Rehab Advisor provides guidelines for conducting energy efficient housing renovation, based on ENERGY STAR specifications. It also provides general information on energy efficiency topics (e.g., air sealing, insulation).
To Get Started you build a profile based on the type of building you are rehabilitating, your role, your climate, and the building's age. You then select the project you are planning, and the Advisor will tell you the incremental cost, including both labor and materials, and savings produced by installing the recommended energy-efficient measures compared with the minimum required. The cost, savings, and payback data are representative of a typical building in your climate region.
TVA energy right Program
Your choices of home energy systems and appliances will affect your energy costs for years to come. The energy right Program from TVA and your local power company encourages, communicates, and supports the wise and efficient use of electricity in Valley homes. Use the calculators to estimate the electricity usage of many of your household appliances as well as your heating and cooling systems.
Home Energy Saver
Use the Home Energy Saver from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to conduct your own energy audit. This tool is designed to help you identify the best ways to save energy in your homes and find the resources to make the savings happen. The pages of results provide a recommendations, ranked-by payback time, that are tailored to the particular home being evaluated.
Water
WaterSense Calculator
Are you installing or replacing faucets or toilets? Use EPA's WaterSense calculator to estimate the amount of water, energy, and money you can expect to save by installing WaterSense-labeled products.
Outdoors—landscaping
The Water Use Calculator allows you to estimate landscape water consumption. The Calculator will give you a water budget for your home, telling you the right amount of water you should be using. Compare the water budget to your actual water bill and see how much water you could be saving. Then try the Water Use Calculator again with more water efficient landscaping added, and see the difference in dollar and water savings this can make.
Wastes—reduce, reuse, recycle, dispose
Your waste reduction activities benefit the environment and your bottom line, but, until you measure them, their true impact will remain unknown. How can you prove, in tons and dollars, that the waste reduction program you developed for yourself or your organization is making a difference? Below are some tools to help you measure (or predict) the benefits of your waste reduction activities.
Calculate your construction waste reduction potential
Peaks to Prairies' Pollution Prevention Information Center, funded by EPA Region 8, provides a tool that can be used to estimate how much waste will be created during a construction project and how much its disposal will cost you, so you can evaluate its potential for reduction, reuse, or recycling.
EPA's WasteWise Program
WasteWise is an EPA program that helps its partners meet goals to reduce and recycle municipal solid waste and selected industrial wastes. Businesses, local governments, and non-profit organizations of all sizes and from all industry sectors can join WasteWise. WasteWise provides several tools, described below, to help you measure your waste reduction efforts.
- Measuring Your Progress helps you assess your program's achievements. It provides guidelines and resources for locating data sources, calculating waste reduction results, and determining the environmental and economic benefits of your program.
- The Waste Reduction and Buy Recycled Tracking Sheet allows you to track your organization's waste prevention, recycling, and purchase of recycled products for one year. It includes five worksheets: "Waste Material," "Waste Prevention," "Recycling," "Buy Recycled," and "Summary." You can evaluate your program by comparing this information to baseline data or results from a previous year.
- The Measure of Success—Calculating Waste Reduction booklet describes the benefits of measuring waste reduction. It provides step-by-step instructions on how to establish or improve your measurement system and explains a variety of options requiring different levels of effort and expense.
Transportation
Your MPG
Your MPG can help you calculate and track your fuel economy and compare it with EPA test ratings. You can share your MPG with others and also see real world mpg estimates that others have gotten by make, model, and year.
Money Savings
Improved fuel economy saves you money every time you fill up! Use this tool to calculate fuel costs and compare potential savings.
Energy Calculators and Software
Use calculators and tools from DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to help you learn about the effect your vehicle has on the environment and your potential savings from driving a more fuel-efficient vehicle.
Climate—greenhouse gases
For basic information and details, visit the Greenhouse Gas Emissions section of EPA's climate change site.
Ten Percent Challenge
The 10% Challenge is a voluntary program to raise public awareness about global climate change and to encourage households and businesses to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by at least 10 percent. It provides the tools and information necessary to conserve energy at home and at work. Use the 10% Challenge online emissions calculator to measure your current annual greenhouse gas emissions.
Household Emissions Calculator
You can use EPA's online calculator to get a rough "ballpark" estimate of your personal or family's greenhouse gas emissions and explore the impact of taking various actions to reduce them.
WAste Reduction Model (WARM)
EPA created the WAste Reduction Model (WARM) to help solid waste planners and organizations track and voluntarily report reductions in greenhouse gas emissions from several different waste management practices. WARM calculates and totals greenhouse gas emissions of baseline and alternative waste management practices—source reduction, recycling, combustion, composting, and landfilling. WARM is available both as a Web-based calculator and as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (317K WinZip archive).
Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator
Did you ever wonder what reducing CO2 emissions by 1 million metric tons means in everyday terms? EPA's equivalency calculator can help you understand just that.
Other Calculators
There are a number of other web-based calculators that can estimate greenhouse gas emission reductions for
Purchasing Choices
Paper Calculator
Placing paper in the recycling bin is just the beginning of the recycling loop—close the loop and support recycling by purchasing the highest recycled-content paper affordable. Use the calculator, provided by the Environmental Defense Fund, to calculate the wood, water, and energy that can be saved, as well as trash and pollution that can be avoided, if you make better choices about the paper used in your home or office. Changing to 100% recycled-content paper will have the most impact.
Purchasing and Procurement
These EPA resources are designed to help you make smart purchasing decisions. Categories include residential as well as commercial, consumer, and office products.
Wellness
The ORNL Health & Wellness Program provides health education and wellness services to ORNL employees and their families. From the main wellness page log in to the Mayo Clinic EmbodyHealth Portal. Under "My Tools" you'll find an exercise tracker to use to measure your activity time and a log for keeping track of your health goals. Click on Monitor My Health on the ribbon at the top of the health portal and you'll find a link to the Mayo Clinic Health Monitor that allows you to track important information related to asthma, blood pressure, blood sugar, headaches, and weight. The "Monitor My Health" page also provides links to a number of other calculators (e.g., heart disease risk, body mass index).
Your actions
What tracking tools, calculators, or other resources have you found helpful in improving your sustainability? What have you learned from using them that can help others? What choices and obstacles do you face? Do you have ideas, comments, or questions? Join the information exchange and share this information and your successes, frustrations, and failures with others. (You must be signed in to the site as a ORNL user to post items. Click on "Sign In" at the top right of the page. Use "ornl\UID" [note that you must use a backslash] and your UCAMS password.)
More Information
The energy right Program from TVA and your local power company encourages, communicates, and supports the wise and efficient use of electricity in Valley homes. In the coming months TVA will be working with local power distributors, the environmental community, and other Tennessee Valley stakeholders to develop new energy efficiency products and services for consumers, business, and industry. Check their web site for periodic updates and to learn how you can be involved.
TVA's energy right Program provides tools and information to:
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