The European Rental Association, the voice of the European equipment rental industry, has today launched the ERA Equipment CO₂ Calculator, an independent and free-to-use online tool to enable equipment stakeholders to make more sustainable choices when using construction equipment.

The Calculator determines the carbon footprint of construction equipment over its entire lifecycle and is applicable to all types of equipment, from mini excavators and wheel loaders to generators, boom lifts and access platforms.

The results provide an estimate of the carbon footprint per hour of use, allowing construction equipment users to, for example, compare different use scenarios, investigate which part of the lifecycle contributes most to the carbon footprint and evaluate the effects of alternative fuel choices.

The Calculator can be used to evaluate a single ownership period of one piece of equipment and, furthermore, to determine the climate impact of entire fleets of equipment or the total carbon footprint of all machines on a given construction site.

Michel Petitjean, ERA Secretary General, said:

“The ERA Equipment CO₂ Calculator is the first of its kind and a much-needed tool to help bring down emissions in the construction sector.

“By enabling equipment users to see the carbon footprint of their machinery for every hour of use, they can make the most environmentally sustainable choices when deciding whether to rent, lease or purchase equipment, evaluate areas for improvement and, ultimately, reduce their carbon footprint.”

How the Calculator works

The Calculator has six easy 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 Calculator is easy to use, with a simple registration process for users to save their calculations for later use. Alternatively, users can do single calculations without the need to register. The Calculator can also be embedded on external websites.

Background

The ERA Equipment CO₂ Calculator, which will complement the ERA TCO Calculator, is primarily targeted at contractors, rental companies, distributors, OEMs, public authorities and other equipment users.

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, and the online tool was built by Alias, a digital services provider.

Following this initial release, a second version of the Calculator will be released in the coming months that will enable users to directly compare two different scenarios.