Climate Neutrality Model

Below is a model that uses current carbon emission data to project the future emissions of EMU’s campus. Interactive elements such as filters, sliders, and input boxes can be used to manipulate the projections both on an institutional level, and an individual level. These can be used to determine the impact certain behaviors have on the carbon footprint of EMU, and visually see how much a change could influence future emissions.

On this page, the first model displays EMU’s full carbon emissions, while the second model near the bottom of the page normalizes this data per FTE (full time equivalent) campus user which includes all faculty, staff and students on the main campus. 

For both models, a checkbox list shows each category that carbon data was collected - these can be used to filter the model to only see categories you care most about. The first model shows a set of input boxes labeled by each future year, as well as a slider. Both can be used to manipulate the projections. Changing the slider assumes a constant percentage change from now-2040, whereas the input boxes can be used to specify different percentage changes for each 5 year increment. 

The second model shows input boxes where you can indicate some decreases you could make individually and see how much that impacts the projected emissions. For example, if you carpool to work once a week, and the drive is usually 10 miles - take the 10 miles per week and multiply by 52 weeks per year. This is what you should put in the input box. This is by no means perfect, and uses a lot of generalizations per campus user, however this can give you an estimate of how much some simple lifestyle changes can really make a difference in the long run.