An Extensive Review of 9 Online Carbon Footprint Calculators

Written by Michele Romano in Carbon Footprint

Are you thinking of taking the time to calculate your personal carbon footprint? This task can be confusing as there are so many options to choose from – which carbon footprint calculator should you use? And the answer isn’t that simple – it depends.

Many factors go into which carbon footprint calculator you should use. How much time do you want to spend? How much information do you have available? Where are you located? How old are you?

I have tested out the top 3 carbon footprint calculators and compared them based on time it took me to complete, ease of use, quality of the report given at the end.

After testing multiple carbon footprint calculators, I recommend “CarbonFootprint.com” as the best. Although it took the longest to complete and required data from my utility bills, it had the most useful results.

Here are my results in a table:

time
(min)		need data
from bills		ease
of use
reportresults
(tonnes)
Carbon Footprint24yesmediumgreat11
Conservation International4noeasybasic15
Nature Conservancy12yesconfusingpoor25
CoolClimate Network12yesconfusingbasic25
Carbonzero8yeseasybasic8
Tree Canada9yesmediumbasic7
Park City Green4noeasypoorn/a
WWF8noeasygood9
Zero Footprint
Youth Calculator		8noeasybasic6
Table 1: Review of multiple Personal Online Carbon Footprint Calculators

As you can see from Table 1, the results are not exactly consistent! Several factors are attributed to this range of results including the fact that some of the calculators required data for household gas and electricity usage but they did not take into account the number of people living in the house. You can find the detailed explaination under the heading for each of the personal online carbon calculators below.

How Did I Select The Calculators To Review?

I simply chose the top search results!

When I do a search in Google for “carbon footprint calculator” the top results in order are:

and top search results for “carbon footprint Canada” are:

finally top search results for “carbon footprint calculator kids” returns:

For each personal online carbon footprint calculator that I tested, I started the timer and completed the timer as quickly as I could. I made sure to logout of the websites that I used to calculate my utilities so that the same amount of time was used to login and click around to generate the report that would get me my energy consumption.

I used the same guesstimates for things like flight distance which varies each year but I based it off of last year. I also was consistent with the answers in terms of values that I entered into each calculator.

CarbonFootprint.com

CarbonFootprint.com was the online calculator that took me the most amount of time to complete. In total, it took 24 minutes. I think this would have been much less if I didn’t make a mistake and have to redo it. The online application seemed simple to use but I did get mixed up a few times with some of the confusing buttons.

At the top of the application there are tabs for the different areas of the calculation like Home, Flights, Car etc. The first tab took the longest to figure out because it involved getting some data from my utility bills.

Once I completed the form for house, I clicked “Flights >” which I thought saved my values and moved me onto the next section. I was wrong. After I finished all of the sections, my results tab showed 0 for the previous sections because they weren’t saved. I had to go and redo each one again (and since I didn’t save my energy consumption values I had to go back into my bills and calculate them again).

On my second time filling in the form for the House section, I had a decimal in the value input field. When I clicked on “Calculate Household Footprint”, it appeared that nothing happened. However, there was an error message that I didn’t notice for a few minutes that said I had to enter whole numbers into the input field. Once I finally saw this error message I used a whole number and the amount was added for my electricity use.

In the flights tab, I was able to enter the airport city and the autocomplete found one of the airports I needed. But when I tried to find Bordeaux France, it did not come up. So I had to choose Paris instead as I’m guessing it is a similar distance.

I liked that the car section had an easy way to find my car, by selecting the year, make and model. Then I had to choose the engine type which I didn’t really know but I guessed. The value it gave me for my fuel consumption was way too low. I know the real value because my car has it on a display and I pay attention to these things. So, I decided to reset the form and manually enter the value. I live in a valley with many hills and we go up the mountain often so I guess that is why my fuel economy is not as good as the manufacturer says it should be.

One the secondary tab, I had to enter values in one of the three given currencies (USD, GDP or EUR). This was a bit annoying for me because I had to mentally convert things from CAD to USD to do this. I was guessing on all of these values anyways so it wasn’t super accurate but this section made up 3.63 / 11.76 or 30% of my carbon footprint so I’m not sure about the accuracy of this calculation.

PROS

Although the flow of submitting these forms was awkward, I liked that I always knew how far along in the process I was and things were visually understandable. I liked that it took into account my gas and electricity data, flights, car values. The secondary tab gave me many things to think about like what type of meat eater I am (heavy, medium, low, pescatarian, vegetarian, vegan). It was interesting that it asked me about Insurance, this is not something I would have thought about in terms of a carbon footprint.

I think this calculator gave me the best results information. It showed how I compared to the average for my country as well as the world target. It gave me a button to offset my carbon emissions.

CONS

This calculator was a little confusing to use. As mentioned above, I made a mistake and had to redo the entire thing.

This calculator did not take into account the fact that I already offset my flights. On the house tab, it allowed me to enter the number of people in my house. The total of my energy consumption from my utility bills was divided by that number. But when I entered the value for car and secondary, I was also including my entire family in this but I don’t think it was accounted for. I later updated the secondary section to be 1/4 of the total for the family but I did not update the car value.

The car section did not take into account what type of driving I do, mostly city or highway. Nor did it account for hills. But if you enter the value that is displayed on the car instead of using the car model picker, you can use the actual average.

Conservation International

The calculator at Conservation International took about 4 minutes to complete. The very first thing I had to enter into this calculator was my US ZIP code. I live in Canada so this did not work for me. However, I selected a random ZIP and proceeded just so that I can see what types of questions are asked etc. The results of this calculator will not be super accurate because I think it takes into account the weather and energy options available for that ZIP code.

This calculator used my house size and a few questions about energy saving appliances within my house. But a question like “I line dry my laundry” was difficult for me to answer because YES, I do that for the most part but in the winter I also use a combination of the line and my dryer.

PROS

The forms were easy to use, no confusing actions that needed to be done like in the Carbon Footprint calculator (my top choice above). I like that it had little tips along the way “Did You Know” related to the data that I was entering. I can always learn something new!

I did not need to get the values from my utility bills which made this calculator easier to use but I feel this might make it less accurate.

CONS

This calculator did not ask me about my shopping habits which in the above calculator accounted for 30% of my carbon emissions.

The results page was not very helpful, it basically gave me a total number and equated that to the number of trees. It also showed me in number of trees the US average for my house, car and flights. But this does not show how this average compared globally. Being above average in America is not necessarily a good thing, I think it would make sense to show how different the global target is which is much much smaller than the US average.

The Nature Conservancy

The personal carbon footprint calculator at The Nature Conservancy took 12 minutes to complete. Once again, this is a calculator for people living in the US. There is a tab for Country but I was not able to change it away from United States. The next form field is for US ZIP code. Again I selected a random ZIP.

This calculator asked for my annual household income. This alone changed the calculated carbon emissions.

The form was not very intuitive and the default values needed to be removed or edited rather than being blank to start. Each time I clicked to go to the next section, it changed the page but it took me to the bottom of the next page and I had to scroll up to enter the values.

The report at the end of this calculator was not helpful. It only gave me my total footprint of 28 tons CO2/year and said that I am 65% better than average. This is only comparing me to the average in the US (which it doesn’t even state) which might make me believe I am doing a great job but the target goal is actually 2 tons.

PROS

This calculator involves many areas that has an impact on one’s carbon footprint like travel, shopping, food etc.

CONS

I was confused with the interface. I did not like the default values that it put in. It asks for water usage / year – not sure how to find that.

This calculator asked me for the total of my gas and electrical bills in $/year rather than kwH or GJ. I live in BC which has clean energy already so this didn’t really work for me.

The shopping section was confusing and filling in the values was annoying. There were presets in the advanced tab that seemed way off.

I do not recommend this calculator.

CoolClimate Network

The carbon calculator at the CoolClimate Network is the same as The Nature Conservancy except that they have graphs at the bottom that change as you go along. See my above notes on the annoyances of this calculator.

Although this is slightly better than the very similar calculator from The Nature Conservancy because it has more in the results given, I do not recommend this calculator.

Carbonzero

The carbon footprint calculator at Carbonzero took 8 minutes to complete. The user interface was fairly easy to navigate. This particular calculator is made for Canadians but I don’t think you have to be Canadian to use it as it doesn’t have any spot where you have to enter a Postal Code or city.

This is a a very basic calculator that includes home utilities, vehicles, flights and other ground travel.

I needed to use the values from my utility bills which I like because I think that gives an accurate estimate of my total. However, it did not take into account the number of people living at my house.

PROS

In the vehicle section it asked about my car model and was easy to use. It also asked me about where I drive (city and highway). The flight form was much easier to use than that of CarbonFootprint.com and it had more airports in the autocomplete.

The application was easy to use. I did not get confused or make any mistakes.

CONS

This calculator did not account for any other type of shopping like food or technology. It did not account for annual household income or meat eating habits.

The results were very basic and it didn’t compare me to national averages or give me any tips about improving my carbon footprint.

I do not recommend this calculator.

Tree Canada

The personal carbon calculator for Tree Canada took 9 minutes to complete. This is a carbon footprint calculator for Canadians and you have to enter your province.

This calculator was fairly easy to use but the tabs were a bit confusing because I had my browser set to half the screen of my laptop (less confusing if I had done full screen).

This calculator asks for information about your energy use in your home, flights and vehicles. It did not ask for food information or other shopping habits.

The forms were confusing. I had an error message on one of the forms but it wasn’t evident at first. When I had to fill in the form field again, I didn’t realize that all the other fields had been reset and I had to enter them all over again.

PROS

Not sure.

CONS

The results are in the same window as the form, there isn’t really a clear indication that it is complete

The report at the end was very basic and did not make any comparisons to national averages or global targets. It did show me the number of trees to offset my emissions.

There was a little popup in the corener that was getting in the way so I had to close it.

I do not recommend this carbon footprint calculator.

WWF

The WWF personal carbon footprint calculator too about 8min to complete. This calculator came up as a carbon footprint calculator for kids. And I think it is the best of the kids calculators.

This calculator is made for people in the UK so some of the monetary selections have to be converted into £. At the end of the questionnaire, it asked which country you are from and the two options are UK or Other.

The footprint calculator asked one simple multiple choice question per page. Beside each question there was a little helpful hint about the question you are asked. For example, a question about money spent in restaurants has a side fact about food purchased in restaurants having a higher footprint than food purchased and cooked at home.

PROS

This was the only carbon footprint calculator that asked anything about having a pet. As we know, pets have their own carbon pawprint which can be significant. I liked that they asked about food wasted in your house, if you pay attention to locally sourced food and if I offset my flights.

CONS

As a Canadian, I have to convert dollar values.

I think this is the best carbon calculator for kids and it is also very good for adults too, particularly if you live in the UK. I would recommend this as my second choice as it is not quite as detailed as the CarbonFootprint.com calculator (although this had some details that the other did not have).

Park City Green

Park City Green has a carbon footprint calculator for kids that took me 3 minutes to complete. This is a calculator for very young kids. It is easy to use with simple multiple choice questions. It shows you the number of steps remaining and you can go back and change your answers.

It asks simple questions about things you do i your home to save energy and water. After each question, there is a little fact about the question you just answered to get kids thinking about the importance of that task.

PROS

It is very simple and they have 10 interesting facts for kids to think about.

CONS

Some of the questions had strange language like for how many hours a day do you use a screen, the answers were in the format 10 to 8, 8 to 6. This seemed backwards to me.

The results at the end are confusing, they give you a score out of 10. For a carbon footprint calculator, I was expecting an amount of gas emitted. But maybe that is because I am an adult.

Zero Footprint Youth Calculator

The Zero Footprint Youth Calculator took 8 minutes to complete. This is meant for older kids to learn about calculating a personal carbon footprint.

This calculator requires that you register but does not require an email address but does as gender, birthdate and school. The list of schools are from the United States.

There are interesting questions like whether you have a swimming pool, if you water your lawn or have a summer home.

I think this is a decent calculator for kids but I prefer the WWF carbon footprint calculatore in terms of the results that are given. The results for this calculator are a measure of tonnes of CO2 (which is better than a score out of 10 like the Park City Green carbon footprint calculator).

PROS

The questions seem relevant for a youth and take into account a variety of areas that can affect one’s carbon footprint. For example, do we read a newspaper or pack lunches in reusable containers. How many bags of garbage does the family put out each week.

It offers good tips like adjust your water heater, check the furnace filter etc.

CONS

The site only works in the US because you have to pick a school to proceed.

Conclusion

If you are an adult and you have access to your utility bills, I recommend you use the CarbonFootprint.com carbon footprint calculator. Once you learn how to submit each tab on the form it is straight forward. I think this calculator took me the most time because I was confused with the interface but it should be less than 10 minutes to complete.

This carbon footprint calculator works in multiple countries.

If you have kids that are interested in learning more about their personal carbon footprint, I recommend the WWF calculator. They have done an excellent job with making it user friendly and they give nice details about many areas of life that can affect one’s carbon footprint.

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