Travel Carbon Footprint Calculator
Compare CO₂ emissions by transport mode
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How it works
- Enter your route.
- Select your travel mode (flight, car, train, or sailing).
- We calculate CO₂ per passenger using IPCC emission factors.
Frequently asked questions
What emission factors does this calculator use?
We apply IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) emission factors for each transport mode. These are the same factors used in most academic and governmental carbon accounting tools. Flight calculations include a radiative forcing multiplier to account for the additional warming effect of contrails and NOx emissions at altitude.
Which transport mode produces the least CO₂ per passenger?
Train travel is generally the lowest-carbon option for land routes, producing a fraction of the emissions of a comparable car or flight journey. Sailing produces near-zero operational emissions but is only practical for coastal or ocean routes. For most city-to-city trips, taking the train instead of flying can reduce your carbon footprint by 70–90%.
Does the calculator show emissions per person or for the whole group?
Results are shown per passenger. For flights, we assume an average seat occupancy based on typical load factors. If you are travelling as a group, multiply the per-person figure by the number of travellers to get the total trip footprint.
How is the distance between two cities calculated?
We calculate the great-circle distance (the shortest path along the surface of the Earth) between the geographic coordinates of both cities. For road travel (car), a road-distance multiplier is applied on top of the straight-line distance to approximate real driving routes.