Carbon Offset Calculator

Flight emissions are conventionally reported per passenger-mile rather than per flight, because a flight's total fuel burn is shared across everyone on board — the standard way to compare 'my personal flying footprint' against driving or other activities is to attribute your share of the flight's emissions to you individually. If you're comparing your own trip's footprint against a household's driving footprint, entering the number of passengers you're personally responsible for (often just yourself, or your traveling family) gives the more directly comparable number.

It's a reasonable midpoint estimate, not a live market quote. Voluntary carbon offset prices vary substantially by project type and verification quality — nature-based projects like reforestation often price lower, while high-durability projects like direct air capture price meaningfully higher, and prices from different registries (Gold Standard, Verra, and others) for similar project types can still differ. Use this figure for rough budgeting, and get an actual quote from a specific registered offset provider before treating any number here as a real purchase price.

Only if you enter the actual gallons of gasoline each vehicle consumed for that distance — this calculator computes driving emissions directly from fuel consumed, not from distance and an assumed fuel-economy figure, so it does correctly reflect that a more efficient vehicle burning fewer gallons over the same trip produces proportionally lower emissions. If you only know miles driven and not gallons used, divide the miles by your vehicle's average miles-per-gallon to get the fuel-consumed figure this calculator needs.

This calculator uses a single national US-average emissions factor for electricity, but the actual carbon intensity of a kilowatt-hour varies enormously by region depending on how the local grid generates power — a region running mostly on coal emits several times more CO2 per kWh than one running mostly on hydro, nuclear, or wind. If you want a more accurate figure, look up your specific utility's or regional grid operator's published emissions intensity (often reported in lbs or kg CO2 per kWh) and scale this estimate proportionally.