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Calculating carbon emissions from personal travelling: insights from a top-down analysis of key calculators

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Abstract

Personal travelling unfavourably contributes to the emissions of greenhouse gases, which adversely causes long-term damage to the climate. In order to reduce the associated negative impacts of such activities on the environment, there is a wide consensus that enhancements and innovations in the efficiency of vehicles will not be enough, but behavioural changes are needed. For this, individuals should be able to measure their travel-related carbon emissions, and such emissions could be determined by using personal carbon footprint calculators, which proliferated during the previous decade. However, various research questions related to such calculators are yet to be answered in published literature. As such, this paper investigates how key transport-based calculators account for emissions from personal transport-related activities following a top-down analysis. In this endeavour, ten such calculators are investigated through a set of formulated research questions to analyse their scope, calculation approach used, transparency, consistency of results, communication methods utilized and platform differences. Results revealed that the calculators have varying granularity, have limited transparency, provide significantly inconsistent results in some cases and are not fully engaging end users. Based on limitations identified, recommendations have been proposed through a taxonomy to guide policy-makers towards improving such tools.

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Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Data availability

All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article.

Notes

  1. Carbon Footprint. Helps and FAQs for the Online Calculators. Available at: http://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculatorfaqs.html

  2. Google trends on carbon calculators: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&q=carbon%20calculator

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Science and Technology, Middlesex University Mauritius, Flic-en-Flac, Mauritius

    Girish Bekaroo & Divesh Roopowa

  2. Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

    Abubakar Zakari

  3. A.James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Debbie Niemeier

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  1. Girish Bekaroo
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  2. Divesh Roopowa
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Contributions

GB and DR defined the scope of the research, collected and analysed data in addition to preparing a first draft of the paper. AZ extended the analysis and discussions presented in this paper. DN assisted in defining the taxonomy presented in this paper and provided support in editing and finalizing the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Girish Bekaroo.

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Bekaroo, G., Roopowa, D., Zakari, A. et al. Calculating carbon emissions from personal travelling: insights from a top-down analysis of key calculators. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 8853–8872 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-11179-z

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