John,
some first general thoughts about the carbon footprint module:
If the carbon module is implemented in a "general" drupal website, you will probalby have 3 different group of users:
1) anonymous users: They might have never heard about carbon footprints and would simply like to see how much CO2 a car ride or air plane journey of 500 km produces. But they won't want to really calculate and store their complete footprints.
2) interested users: Registered users who are willing to calculate their footprints but the input for the footprint must be as easy as possible. They can accept that the result is only a rough estimate.
3) technically minded users: as from 2) but these users would ask for more precision in calculation. They will be willing to adjust the carbon sources as exactly as possible to their need.
With your own website you are obviously targeting group 2. (It would be interesting to know, how you are getting these users.) For most websites, I guess you would start with group 1 and a certain percentage of group 1 gets really interested and becomes a member of group 2. In other words: for the "success" of this module, group 1 should be offered something as well.
For anonymous users I suggest to offer a relatively simple CO2 calculator, as you can find many of them on Internet. It could be a page where you choose a carbon source from the list, enter the quantity, hit a "calculate CO2" button and get the result. Most likely, this is very easy for you to implement.