The Church of England’s Energy Footprint Tool (EFT) is now open for churches to enter their 2024 energy use.
The EFT enables parishes to measure their annual carbon emissions from churches, halls and other parish buildings. This work is an essential part of caring for God’s Creation, by helping to combat global heating and climate change.
Access the EFT via the Online Parish Returns System here
We are asking someone from every church to enter their energy information. The data collected will help your church understand its carbon footprint and will mean you may be eligible for grants to help kickstart your net zero projects.
Adam Clarke, Net Zero Carbon Programme Manager for the Diocese of Leicester said, “The Church of England’s General Synod voted in February 2020 for the whole of the Church to achieve net zero carbon by 2030. The vote recognised that responding to the climate crisis is an essential part of our responsibility to safeguard God’s creation and achieve a just world.
“The Net Zero by 2030 programme was then established and as part of this, the EFT has been created to collect data to establish a baseline and help churches locally find out their carbon footprint.
“It should only take less than an hour to fill the EFT in and the results will really help a church to kickstart carbon reducing projects as we journey together to reach net zero carbon.”
The EFT is open until 30 June 2025.
What do I have to do?
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. If you have solar panels, find information on their generation over the preceding year.
If you need to determine whether a building is ‘in scope’ use the new online building scope checker. Essentially, if a building is not owned by the Church of England then you do not need to report on it.
Enter your data via the Online Parish Returns System. Once you have entered all the data, you will immediately receive your report which will include the church’s carbon footprint in CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) and how this has changed in recent years.
Watch a video guide to filling in the Energy Footprint Tool here
(Note - This guide shows the 2024 tool and there have have been some changes made for 2025.)
What’s new this year?
- New questions have been added to find out about all the buildings in your parish.
- 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.
- 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.
- You don’t need to enter work-related travel expenses this year.
- The EFT is closing earlier this year (30 June 2025) to give more time to analyse the data and share the results before diocesan synods in the autumn.
Want to find out more information and keep up to date?
Sign up to the Church of England’s monthly Environment Bulletin to recieve updates throughout the year.