Emissions Calculator

The below calculator is designed to provide indicative estimates of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions based on typical lifestyle and travel choices. The outputs are shown in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO₂e) per year. They are not a full life-cycle assessment, but a simplified tool to help you understand major drivers of emissions.

Start: select Lifestyle at the top of the calculator to estimate your household’s annual carbon emissions based on everyday factors like driving, home energy, and diet. When you’re ready, switch to the Travel tab. You can carry over your Lifestyle results and add travel emissions. Use the Add Trip button to calculate flights and/or ground travel. Each trip you enter will appear as its own line item, and you can add up to 20 trips. Your Lifestyle emissions and all trips are then added together so you can see your total estimated footprint in tonnes of CO₂e!

Lifestyle Emissions Calculator

Estimate annual CO₂e from home energy (incl. home size), driving, and diet (× household). Use presets or manual entry. Country type-ahead; Province/State only for Canada/USA.

Location
Household
Driving

Units: L/100km (petrol/diesel)

Primary Home
Diet (per person)

Travel Emissions Calculator

Add trips to build up your travel footprint. Each row adds flights (direct or layover) and any car/rail you include.

Flights

If set, overrides city lookups. For round-trip, enter total km for the whole trip.

Ground travel

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Calculator Methodology & Limitations

How we calculate lifestyle emissions:

  • Vehicle emissions are based on annual kilometres travelled and fuel efficiency (with options for petrol, diesel, or electric vehicles).
  • Electricity emissions use country-level averages, and for Canada/USA they adjust to the selected province/state grid mix.
  • Home energy estimates (natural gas and electricity) scale with reported square footage and user inputs.
  • Diet emissions use typical per-meal averages for beef/lamb and poultry consumption, multiplied by the number of people in the household.

Limitations to keep in mind:

  • National and regional emission factors reflect averages, not the exact energy mix of your utility provider or the specific performance of your home.
  • Household emissions scale with square footage and consumption estimates, but don’t account for differences in insulation, heating systems, or appliances.
  • Food impacts use global averages; individual diets may differ depending on sourcing (local vs imported, grass-fed vs conventional, etc.).
  • The calculator is designed as an educational tool. For formal reporting (corporate GHG inventories, regulatory compliance), more detailed standards such as the GHG Protocol should be used.

How we calculate travel emissions:

  • Flight emissions are based on the great-circle distance between departure and arrival airports (with an extra leg included if you choose a layover).
  • Emission factors come from published averages for short-haul (<3,700 km) and long-haul flights, measured in kilograms of CO₂-equivalent per passenger-kilometre.
  • Multipliers are applied depending on seat class (economy, premium, business, first) to reflect the larger share of cabin space per passenger.
  • Ground travel uses average values for passenger cars and national rail.
  • Totals are shown in tonnes of CO₂-equivalent, rounded to one decimal place.

Limitations to keep in mind:

  • Distances are calculated “as the crow flies.” Real flight paths can be longer due to routing, weather, or air traffic control.
  • The model does not include non-CO₂ effects of aviation (like contrails or nitrogen oxides), which may roughly double the climate impact.
  • Car and train emissions use average fleet intensities. They don’t capture the specific efficiency of your vehicle, how many passengers are in it, or differences between high-speed and regional trains.
  • The calculator is meant as a guide for personal footprinting, not as a certified inventory tool.

General assumptions & limitations

  • Emission factors are drawn from reputable international averages (e.g. ICAO, IPCC, national inventories), but local variations are not fully captured (e.g. specific vehicle efficiency, renewable electricity contracts, local farming practices).
  • Calculations focus on direct energy use and typical supply chain impacts of diet. They do not include embedded emissions from goods, services, infrastructure, or broader economy-wide activities.
  • Flight emissions do not currently include radiative forcing multipliers for non-CO₂ effects at altitude, which would increase estimated climate impact.
  • Results are rounded to one decimal place in tonnes of CO₂e and should be interpreted as approximate.
  • The tool is intended for educational and engagement purposes, not for regulatory or compliance use.

Per Capita Emissions

If you are interested in gaining insight on the per capita emissions of your country we recommend using the Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT) that can be found on here.

CAIT estimates of country greenhouse gas emissions

Enter a country and an optional comparison to see the latest Total GHG, Per-capita GHG, and GHG per GDP using emissions data from Climate Watch (CAIT). Note that population and GDP data were taken from World Bank Group for the purposes of computing per-capita figures.

CAIT, developed by the World Resources Institute, are based on the same international reporting guidelines that governments use when submitting greenhouse gas inventories to the UN.

Learn More

CAIT

CAIT compiles data from official UNFCCC submissions and scientific datasets such as EDGAR to provide a consistent, country-by-country view of total greenhouse gas emissions. This means CAIT includes all major greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases) and accounts for a wide range of sectors — not just household energy and transport, but also agriculture, industrial processes, waste management, and in many cases land-use change. In contrast, the lifestyle and travel calculators on this site only estimate emissions from direct personal activities such as home energy use, diet, driving, and flights. They do not capture the full economy-wide sources of emissions included in CAIT, such as heavy industry, freight transport, supply chains, or large-scale agriculture. As a result, CAIT values for national per-capita emissions are necessarily higher than what an individual would see reflected in these calculators, since they include the shared infrastructure and production systems that support modern economies.