Calculating the carbon footprint of construction equipment
The European Rental Association has launched on online tool to calculate the carbon footprint of all main types of construction equipment.
The ERA Equipment CO2 Calculator (equipmentcalculator.org) is free to use and determines the carbon footprint of construction equipment over its entire lifecycle. Machines covered range from mini excavators and wheeled loaders to generators and access platforms.
The calculator has six steps, requiring basic information about the characteristics and use of a piece of equipment – equipment production, transportation, lifetime and utilisation, energy consumption, maintenance and end-of-life – and the users are guided through the process step-by-step.
The user information is combined with background data to estimate the carbon footprint of the equipment over its lifecycle, presenting a total carbon footprint per hour of use and a breakdown of the carbon footprint per parameter.
The calculations were developed by the independent research consultancy CE Delft, who first developed the tool for the ‘Carbon Footprint of Construction Equipment’ study released in 2019. The online tool was built by Alias, a digital services provider.