The Church of England's Energy Footprint Tool is open for churches to enter energy use from 2024. The data collected from the tool will help your church understand its carbon footprint and will mean you may be eligible for grants to help kickstart your net zero projects. Currently Chester Diocese is 20% completed but we would really like to get to 95% this year. Chadkirk deanery are our EFT champions this month, with a brilliant 46% completion rate. Mottram are close followers at 43%. Macclesfield are racing ahead! Could your parish help your deanery (and the diocese) boost data collection in June?
This work is an essential part of caring for God’s Creation, by helping to combat global heating and climate change. The easy-to-use online tool will reveal your carbon footprint, based on the energy you use to heat and light your buildings. You can find the Energy Footprint Tool on the Online Parish Returns System.
Simply gather together your energy bills from 2024 and enter your church’s energy use figures into the online survey. This includes your actual energy consumption, as well as costs – you can find all this information on your bills.
Once you have entered all the data, you will immediately receive a report and results on your computer or smartphone. This includes the church’s carbon footprint in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) and how this has changed in recent years.
The deadline for entries to be included in national statistics is the end of June 2025.
What's new this year?
The EFT has been updated to reflect feedback from users last year and to help the Church of England better understand all the buildings we own or use.
Key updates:
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New questions have been added to find out about all the buildings in your parish. A new online Building Scope Checker Tool can help you determine which of these buildings you need to report on and what information you need to provide for each.
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When you have finished your survey, you will now see a report which shows the total carbon emissions for your Parish and then the carbon emissions for each building you have reported energy use data for.
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The list of approved green tariffs is changing. This has impacted whether the EFT will automatically offset some of your carbon emissions when you select a particular supplier. Look out for an extensive list of approved green energy suppliers later in the year - the Church of England has appointed specialist consultants to work on this.
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You don’t need to enter work-related travel expenses information this year. (But please do keep a record of your travel expenses and mileage in 2025 as we will be collecting this information next year.)
The EFT is closing earlier this year - 30 June 2025, to give more time to analyse the data and share the results back in time for diocesan synods in the autumn.
How to fill out the Energy Footprint Tool - a detailed screen by screen walk through to help you fill out the tool.