Transportation Emissions:

For most of us ‘transportation emissions’ represent over half of our carbon footprint. These emissions are from driving our vehicles or flying on planes.

Vehicle Emission Quantification:

Tracking transportation emissions requires knowledge of how far we drive, and the mileage efficiency (miles per gallon) of our vehicles.

Option 1. Easiest and less accurate.

Know the mile

Tracking our miles per gallon (miles per kwh for electric vehicles) is easy on most newer vehicles. This is part of the dashboard menu, referenced in information/efficiency. If your car does not track mpg, no worries. You can manually calculate this by filling your car with gas and recording the miles on your odometer. The next time you fill your car with gasoline record the new mileage on your odometer and the gallons of gas it took to fill your tank. Dividing the difference in your odometer reading by the gallons of gas will give you the miles per gallon.

Odometer reading start = 77,500. Odometer reading end = 77,850. Gallons of gasoline = 16 gallons. Your mileage efficiency is (77,850 miles -77,500 miles) /16 gallons = 21.8 mpg

To calculate the emissions from your vehicle you would divide the miles traveled per year by the vehicle efficiency to get the gallons of gasoline per year. Multiply the gallons of gasoline by 8.8 kg CO2/gallon to get the carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Example: 12000 miles traveled per year/ 21.8 mpg = 550 gallons of gasoline

550 gallons of gasoline x 8.8 kg CO2/gal gasoline = 4840 kg CO2.