ACC Carbon Tool

Screenshot of chart showing two probability distributions of different shapes, slightly overlapping

The ACC Carbon Tool is intended to help analyse and understand some of the uncertainties in carbon emissions. It can be used to visualise the emissions from anything — buildings, consumer products, countries, or the whole world. You can use it to see how likely you are to meet your targets and to investigate how emissions might vary over time.

The tool has been developed by the Actuaries' Carbon Collaboration, a group of actuaries and others who are working towards a coherent understanding of the issues around carbon emissions and offsets by considering them in an actuarial context.

What the ACC carbon tool does

The tool is stochastic — it looks at probability distributions of carbon emissions over time. Given a set of emission sources, and the likely patterns of their emissions, it will show you the probability distributions under various circumstances. The analysis includes:

Interactive charts and summary statistics for cumulative and annual emissions and carbon costs by year
Comparison of different scenarios
Analysis of targets: when they might be achieved and the probability of achieving them

Screenshot of chart showing four time series, all with generally rising trends and with funnels of doubt

Getting started

To use the tool, first specify the scenarios you want to analyse. Run the simulation, then view the results. There is online help that explains how to specify your scenarios, how the visualisation works, and what the results mean.

The ACC carbon tool is based on emitter groups and carbon pricings.

Emitter groups represent collections of carbon sources that you can analyse — from global emissions to a particular construction project. Carbon pricings represent project carbon prices. You can define your own emitter groups and carbon pricings, or use the ones that are predefined in the tool.