Environment and Culture Partners (ECP), a non-profit organisation dedicated to strengthening and broadening the environmental leadership of the cultural sector, has announced the findings of the Carbon Inventory Project 2023. This was a collective effort from US museums to establish the US cultural sector’s first carbon benchmark from energy use.
Key figures
- The 80 institutions that participated in CIP manage a combined 20 million square feet of conditioned space, or more than 450 acres.
- The collective greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with the 2022 energy consumption of CIP participants were more than 187,000 metric tons of CO2e. This is equivalent to the annual emissions of over 41,000 gasoline-powered passenger cars.
- CIP participants reported an average GHG intensity ranging from less than zero (due to onsite renewables) to approximately 49 kgCO2e/ft2, with an overall average of around 9.6 kgCO2e/ft2. This metric will become increasingly important as more local jurisdictions adopt benchmarking requirements.
- CIP participants account for about 5% of the estimated 4 million metric tons of CO2e emitted by the entire cultural sector in 2022. If the entire sector made the effort to reduce their annual energy consumption by 20%, the related GHG emissions reductions would be equivalent to the annual emissions of 2 natural gas-fired power plants or 181,000 passenger vehicles.
ECP says that it expects these numbers to grow in the future, as participation widens each year for Carbon Day.
The firm adds:
“On behalf of the whole Carbon Inventory Project team, thank you. For those of you that have been doing this work for years, thank you for helping us learn the energy monitoring systems your organization’s use and modeling those for your colleagues and your community.
“For those of you that were new to this, thank you for your curiosity, questions, and commitment to learning. Thank you all for the precious time you set aside to center and uplift this work in the sector. We know our impact can be great, and so powerful all together. We will share next steps related to the future of this initiative in the coming months.”
Participation in the Carbon Inventory Project was made possible by Environment & Culture
Partners, New Buildings Institute, New England Museum Association, and Institute of
Museum and Library Services.
Earlier this month, Environment and Culture Partners announced that it is pursuing a collective agreement on climate collaboration from culture associations in the United States.
