The 1.5°C budget
What it covers, and how we compare you with it
Where 2.5 tonnes comes from
To keep global warming to 1.5°C, the Hot or Cool Institute's 1.5-Degree Lifestyles report (2021) works out how far each person's lifestyle footprint needs to fall, sharing what's left of the world's carbon budget fairly between everyone: about 2.5 tonnes of CO₂e a person by 2030, 1.4 tonnes by 2040 and 0.7 tonnes by 2050. We use the 2030 figure. The report
What the budget covers
It's a lifestyle footprint: the emissions from what households consume.
- Food and drink
- Home energy and water
- Travel, including flights
- Goods: clothes, electronics, furniture and the like
- Leisure and services: hobbies, holidays, eating out
- Money in banks and pensions (financed emissions)
- Public services and infrastructure, like the NHS, schools and roads
How we compare you with it
We compare like with like. From your survey we take everything except your bank and pension: food, commuting and travel, flights, home energy, water and pets. Shopping isn't in the survey yet, so we add a typical UK figure of 1.0 t, the same as the budget would count. That total is what we put against the budget, and the UK average on the results page is worked out the same way.
Your bank and pension are still in your footprint, and still count. We show them on their own because the budget doesn't include them, and because financed emissions are also counted in the footprints of the companies they fund, so adding them would mix two different kinds of figure.
Public services and infrastructure (about 2.4 t a person between them) are left out of both, as the budget leaves them out too. They're shown on the results page as your shared footprint.
Why your headline total is different
The big number on your results page is everything the survey measures, including your bank and pension, so it's the one to watch as you make changes. The comparison with the budget takes money out and adds typical shopping, so the two figures won't match.