The International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is funded and directed by 193 national governments to support their diplomacy and cooperation in air transport as signatory states to the Chicago Convention (1944).
ICAO has developed a methodology to calculate the carbon dioxide emissions from air travel for use in offset programmes.
The ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator allows passengers to estimate the emissions attributed to their air travel. It is simple to use and requires only a limited amount of information from the user.
Summary of the methodology used:
CO2 Emissions per passenger take into consideration the load factor and are based only on passenger operations (i.e. fuel burn associated with belly freight is not considered). The steps for the estimation of CO2 emissions per passenger:
- Step 1: Estimation of the aircraft fuel burn
- Step 2: Calculation of the passengers’ fuel burn based on a passenger/freight factor which is derived from RTK data
- Step 3: Calculation of seats occupied (assumption: all aircraft are entirely configured with economic seats). Seat occupied = Total seats * Load Factor
- Step 4: CO2 emissions per passenger = (Passengers’ fuel burn * 3.16) / Seat occupied