If you would like to use the tool to track the carbon emissions of the organizational travel that supports your digital preservation work, you can do so using the Travel tab.
There are many tools available online which you can use to generate figures for flights, train or car travel. The list below isn’t exhaustive – they all have their pros and cons. and some are focused on a particular mode of transport or stronger for a particular geographic area.
You might like to try and few out and compare the results – where they differ you may find you can to dive into the methodology that sits behind the tools (you should find this described on the website) to better understand the differing assumptions that the figures are built upon and think about which you trust the most.
Suggested tools to try out include the following, but you may find others that you prefer:
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SCIF’s Travel Carbon Calculator can provide an estimate for different types of travel which you can then enter into the calculation tool.
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ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator (ICEC) is a helpful tool for calculating the carbon cost of flights.
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BlocCarbon’s Travel Carbon Calculator calculates the cost of flights, train journeys, buses, cars and taxis and uses the UK government's DESNZ 2026 conversion factors. This tool allows you to build up multimodal journeys (involving different forms of transport) but may be better for journeys starting or ending in the UK.
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World Land Trust Transport Calculator covers a wide range of transport, including flights, cars, trains, buses/coaches, and ferries.
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EcoPassenger is a good option for rail travel, particularly in Europe. It calculates the environmental impact of actual station-to-station journeys across Europe rather than relying on a generic distance-based rail figure.
Whichever tool you choose, it is important to note the unit of measurement used. The Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool will take figures in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) or kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (kgCO2e) – you only need to enter a value in one of these columns not both. If you enter a figure in tCO2e the spreadsheet will convert this to kgCO2e for you.
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Column heading |
Notes |
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Date of travel |
Date that the travel took place. |
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Description (journey - from - to) |
Start and end point of journey. |
|
Mode of transport (e.g. car, flight, train |
Record the mode of transport of this journey (may be multiple if you are using a multimodal calculation tool). |
|
Carbon footprint in tCO2e |
If the tool you are using generates a figure in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e), enter the figure here. This will be converted to kgCO2e in the next column. |
|
Carbon footprint in kgCO2e |
If the tool you are using generates a figure in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (kgCO2e), enter the figure here. Do not worry about overwriting the formula in this column. |
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Source (e.g. tool used to carry out calculation) |
There are multiple tools that can be used to generate carbon calculations of travel. It may be helpful to make a note of the tool you have used here. |
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Notes |
Any other notes that you would like to record. |