A climate footprint generator will make it easier to make sustainable choices

A climate footprint generator will make it easier to make sustainable choices

In the coming years, AAU researchers will develop a climate footprint generator, which can teach us more about our carbon footprints. This gives authorities, companies and private individuals an important foundation for making the best possible decisions to achieve the goal of reducing Denmark's greenhouse gas emissions by 70 percent by 2030

What happens if we work more from home? If we go on holiday rather than buy new garden furniture? If we replace beef with pork? Or if we use new technology in agriculture? Authorities, companies and individuals will be able to answer questions like these by using the climate footprint generator, which AAU researchers are developing in the project ‘Getting the data right’, funded by the KR Foundation.

The climate footprint generator will be able to provide a very concrete answer to the question of what carbon footprint a given activity or product will leave through, for example, production, use and disposal. 

Existing data is outdated and difficult to access

- Knowledge of specific carbon footprints can be used to support decisions and as a basis for moving Denmark in the right direction. So says associate professor Jannick Schmidt, project manager on ‘Getting the data right’, where he and his colleague Professor Bo Weidema will develop the climate footprint generator.

A lot of the data used to calculate carbon footprints today is more than ten years old. The information available in this area is often scattered across systems and databases that do not talk to each other and are not comparable, and according to Jannick Schmidt, this has to change if we are to reach the 70 percent target by 2030.

- Globally, we are facing a huge climate challenge, and we lack lots of knowledge about what we can do to meet it. Basically, we don’t know the effect of many of the measures we are taking today, and this generator will help us find out, he says.


Climate goal requires millions of measures

The climate goal will not be achieved through just a few initiatives, but will require millions of measures, which means there is a need for a generator that can be used to acquire knowledge about the effect of the many millions of measures and decisions to be made at all levels: from those of authorities to the daily activities of individual consumers.

The climate footprint generator is developed as a tool for decision support, primarily for the government and civil service. But the millions of decisions that must be made to achieve the goals really involve us all.

- It is also relevant to ordinary citizens, i.e. us as consumers. It is relevant to NGOs trying to influence consumers, and it is relevant to companies which have to make a large number of important decisions, concludes Jannick Schmidt.

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About the project

‘Getting the data right’ is one of a total of five initiatives in the project package ‘Decarbonizing Denmark: 70by30’, which is funded by the KR Foundation. The project works purposefully to realise Denmark's ambitious climate goal and cement the country's leading position in the climate area internationally. 

‘Getting the data right’ will run over a four-year period, and is anchored in the Danish Centre for Environmental Assessment under the Department of Planning at Aalborg University.

‘Getting the data right’ has received DKK 39 million from the KR Foundation, of which DKK 21.9 million has been allocated to Aalborg University.

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Contact:

Jannick Schmidt, Project manager and Associate Professor, Department of Planning, AAU
Mail: jannick@plan.aau.dk
Phone: 40 25 12 99

Stine Larsen Hoe, press contact, Department of Planning, AAU
Mail: stinelh@plan.aau.dk
Phone:  61 96 72 64