September 15, 2013
A Ryerson professor has developed an online device to calculate the energy savings of specific trees.

Andrew Millward and his team created the Ontario Residential Tree Benefits Estimator, for 27 cities around Ontario. The study involved 577 trees.

“A tree will save between 435 and 483 kWh per household — equal to running a dishwasher once every day for an entire year,” says Millward. He says that is a saving of over $40 over a year.

“Trees provide many social, economic and environmental benefits in addition to the energy conservation ones we highlight in our study,” he says. “Because large trees deliver the lion’s share of benefits, cities require a collective contribution, will and action to ensure we have large healthy trees in our cities.”

Each user of the estimator may choose the city, tree species and location on the property to calculate his or her own real or potential savings.

To see the tree calculator go to www.yourleaf.org/estimator.