We've just launched The Carbon Account. This is a new kind of online carbon calculator, designed to give its users a precise, ongoing record of their emissions from gas and electricity meter readings, car mileages, flights and more. We built it with the idea that we could demonstrate the technical feasibility of personal carbon allocations (see Hillman and Monbiot), and now it's available for free in the hope that it will spread carbon literacy and help people make the right decisions about reducing their emissions.

The Carbon Account is designed to make a traditionally opaque and private aspect of our lives - energy use - visible and social. If you want, you can disclose the emissions that you are responsible for (here are mine); if you're on Facebook you can choose to have each new reading pushed to your wall; if you're part of low-carbon community (a CRAG or a Transition Town, for example) you can set up an account for your group and track your collective progress. The premise of The Carbon Account is that the combination of network and measurement effects will stimulate improved performance, in the form of reduced energy usage. It works for me.