Travel Carbon Calculator
Calculate & Balance the Carbon Footprint of your travel with the world’s best nature based solutions.
TRAVEL CARBON FOOTPRINT FAQs
How do we offset your travel?
We have worked hard over the last 20 years, since founding our social enterprise, to identify and build relationships with the most effective and holistic carbon offsetting projects in the world. We have spent a lot of time establishing their credibility, transparency and effectiveness. Some of the projects we have worked with since their very beginning have now planted over 10 million trees.
The essential idea behind our offset schemes is balance. Carbon Balanced means action on carbon, action on forests, with communities. Simple tree-planting is a less effective solution than community-led projects where the community has full ownership and agency. Livelihoods, biodiversity, wellbeing and health are all integral to the carbon offsets that projects also create.
The projects we work with are all designed and verified under the Plan Vivo Standard, run by Scottish Charity, the Plan Vivo Foundation. This ensures they are designed and verified to the highest standards.
How do we calculate your travel carbon footprint?
All our carbon calculators are based on the best practice methodology from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and DEFRA UK guidance and conversion factors. This enables us to convert the information provided for your journey (or any other activity) to CO2 emissions.
We take into account travel carbon factors including:
- your flight’s emissions to/from your destination
- transport emissions in the destination (land, sea and air)
- accommodation based on main categories
- food (vegetarian)
- a contingency for supply chain emissions and things you buy while on your trip
For most travel, the major impact comes from flying. The impact per passenger is greater when flying in business or first class. This is because the area allocated to these seats is greater than in economy, and therefore increases the proportion of the flight’s emissions they are responsible for.
For example, on a one-way flight from the UK to Nairobi is 6,830 km, an economy passenger is responsible for 0.16 kg CO2e per km with a total flight carbon of 1.11 tonnes. A first passenger is responsible for 0.65 kg CO2e per km with a total flight carbon of 4.45 tonnes.
The distance of a flight also influences the emissions. Take off and landing are the most fuel intensive (and therefore emission intensive) portions of the flight. Long-haul flights are more efficient per km because proportionally more of the flight is spent cruising rather than energy intensive take-off or landing.
The emission factors used in our calculations take radiative forcing into account, which increases total emissions by 90%. Radiative forcing is the increased damage caused by emissions released into the atmosphere at high altitude rather than those released at sea-level.
What does it mean to offset your carbon footprint?
Offsetting your carbon footprint means taking responsibility for the damaging effects of our 21st century lifestyle that have led to the increase in greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere and climate crisis. The science behind this is fairly simple; for every tonne of carbon released into the atmosphere, the ‘offset’ is a carefully designed and monitored ecosystem project which absorbs or stores equivalent CO2 to your emissions in order to compensate or balance your travel.
C Level has been providing this service since 2000. We sell Plan Vivo standard certificates which verify carbon uptake, biodiversity and sustainable livelihood benefits from the Voluntary Emissions Reduction (VERs) market. The certificates are equivalent to one tonne of CO2 and can be referred to as a carbon credit. These are all accounted for on the Markit Environmental Registry. This registry ensures transparency, trust and confidence in the accountability and reporting of carbon credits.
Being Carbon Balanced through C Level’s Balance My Travel means more than just carbon compensation. Our approach has always been to only work with the worlds most holistic carbon offsetting projects. Technology offsets sometimes have very limited broader benefits and are explicitly commercial. We choose to invest in forests and people. Under Plan Vivo, each carbon offset also delivers on biodiversity and sustainable development. More importantly, these are projects owned by local communities. A massive distinction.
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ABOUT C LEVEL
C Level provides you with the best way to offset your carbon footprint – bringing together the natural powers of ecosystems and local communities to take CO2 out of the Earth’s atmosphere and bring it down to earth. Credited with coining the term ‘carbon footprint’ in 2000, C Level works with some of the world’s finest reforestation projects – sequestering CO2 via indigenous forests with local communities. These natural climate solutions are verified under the global Plan Vivo Standard, which puts working with communities, on their own land, right at the heart of its work.
C Level gives you the choice of sustainable carbon offsets that compensate for each tonne of CO2 from your travel, provide biodiversity benefits and engage local communities in forest restoration and conservation.
You will receive a personal certificate confirming you have successfully Carbon Balanced your travel and the projects you have supported.
CommuniTree, Nicaragua
Inspirational project that has planted over 10 million tree with thousands of people. Scaled up in recent years to now be the biggest reforestation project in the country, and has recently been selected by both Springer Nature and Microsoft to deliver carbon balancing.
Hadza Hunter Gatherers & Datooga, Tanzania
Winner of the UN Equator Award for Sustainable Development. Protecting forests in the Yaeda Valley, and area the size of Dartmoor, home to a tribe living there for thousands of years, the ‘last of the first’. The Hadza & Datooga are being given full agency to address the causes of deforestation and protect biodiversity and their own way of life.
Khasi Hill, Meghalaya, India
Villagers in the 11 Khasi indigenous kingdoms working cooperatively to protect and restore forests and sacred groves. The first of its kind project in India, reversing deforestation by planting indigenous trees and enabling the forest to naturally regenerate.