Carbon Footprint Estimator
Estimate your annual carbon footprint from flights, driving, diet choices, and home energy use.
Source: Ember (yearly electricity data); World Bank (CO2 emissions per capita) · Ember 2025; World Bank 2024 · last verified 2026-09-12
How this is calculated
Flights use average per-flight emission factors by haul length. Driving uses a per-km factor for your car type, or your country's grid intensity if electric. Diet uses average annual footprints by diet type. Home energy uses your monthly kWh usage multiplied by your country's grid intensity — all summed into a total, then compared against your country's per-capita average.
Grid carbon intensity does most of the work behind the scenes for both the electric car and home energy figures — see the Electricity Carbon Intensity calculator to look up your own country's figure directly. To compare an electric car against a petrol equivalent specifically, see the EV vs Petrol Cost calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- Why does country matter for an electric car or home energy?
- Electric cars and home electricity are only as clean as the grid that powers them. This calculator uses each country's grid carbon intensity (gCO2/kWh) to convert electricity use into emissions, so the same EV or the same home usage produces very different footprints in, say, France (nuclear-heavy, low intensity) versus a coal-heavy grid.
- How accurate are the flight and diet numbers?
- They use average emission factors consistent with commonly published carbon calculators — not a distance-specific or itemized food-log calculation. Treat the result as a reasonable estimate, not a certified carbon audit.
- What can I do with the "tonnes to offset" figure?
- Your total tCO2e/year is the amount many offset programs would use as a baseline for calculating how many credits to purchase, though this calculator doesn't sell or recommend any specific offset provider.
- What is a carbon footprint?
- A carbon footprint is the total greenhouse gas emissions — expressed in tonnes of CO₂-equivalent (tCO2e) — associated with an individual, household, or activity over a given period, typically a year. It bundles together direct emissions (like burning petrol) and indirect emissions (like the electricity used to charge an EV).
- What is the average carbon footprint per person globally?
- Global average annual per-capita emissions sit around 4–5 tonnes CO2e, but this varies enormously by country — from under 1 tonne in some of the lowest-income countries to well over 10 tonnes in high-income, high-consumption countries. Scientists generally cite a target closer to 2 tonnes per person by 2050 as consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C.
- Which activities produce the most CO₂?
- For most individuals in higher-income countries, home energy use, car travel, and diet are the largest contributors, with long-haul flights adding a disproportionately large amount per trip relative to their frequency — a single long-haul return flight can add close to a tonne of CO2e on its own.
- What is a tonne of CO₂e?
- CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent) is a standard unit that converts the warming effect of different greenhouse gases (methane, nitrous oxide, etc.) into an equivalent amount of CO2, so footprints from different sources — transport, diet, energy — can be added together on a single scale.
- How does my footprint compare to a 1.5°C-compatible budget?
- Climate scientists generally estimate that limiting warming to 1.5°C requires bringing global average per-capita emissions down to roughly 2 tonnes CO2e per year by mid-century — well below the current global average and far below typical footprints in high-income countries, which often exceed this budget several times over.