What carbon intensity can tell you
Carbon intensity describes emissions per unit of electricity. It helps compare reported system conditions across periods, but does not directly measure an individual household’s emissions.
Read the unit
The dashboard uses gCO2/kWh: grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour. In an illustrative calculation, 2 kWh multiplied by 100 gCO2/kWh gives 200 gCO2. That assumes the chosen intensity is appropriate for that energy and period. It does not identify which generators physically supplied a particular socket.
Estimated actual and forecast
The Carbon Intensity API supplies this collector’s national feed. The publisher describes actual intensity as an estimate from metered generation. The collector prefers actual when available, otherwise forecast; its existing history does not preserve which was used for each observation. Avoid describing every saved point as a measured actual. See the publisher’s explanation.
Lower intensity is not necessarily lower total emissions
Consider two hypothetical periods. At 100 gCO2/kWh, 10 kWh corresponds to 1,000 gCO2. At 80 gCO2/kWh, 20 kWh corresponds to 1,600 gCO2. The second intensity is lower but the calculated total is higher because energy use doubles. Report the intensity and energy quantity separately.
What a national average cannot establish
A national average does not identify the physical source reaching one home, isolate the effect of a particular decision or establish why an individual interval changed. Treat it as a system-level indicator with a defined reporting methodology, rather than an individual footprint certificate.
Check the archive context
The collector attaches carbon intensity to a grid sample. Its saved timestamp does not independently establish when the carbon figure was published upstream. Different feeds can have different intervals. Before drawing a precise connection between minute-to-minute changes, check timestamps, coverage, resolution and the limits described in the methodology.