What is a carbon footprint?
A carbon footprint measures our impact on the climate in terms of carbon dioxide, or CO₂, released into the atmosphere. It's influenced by our lifestyle choices, such as: how we travel, how much energy we use in our homes, our shopping habits, and even the food we choose to eat. Essentially, the smaller our carbon footprint, the better our impact.
Thinking about the impact that our actions have on the environment in terms of a carbon footprint can be useful because it makes the emissions that we generate every day – perhaps without being aware of them – more tangible.
How much of it should be removed?
Latest energy, economy and climate science (as per IPCC findings) align on that fact that we need to actively remove CO₂ from the atmosphere to limit global warming to 1.5°C or get back to this level in case of overshoot.
This is on top of emissions reductions, and also been recognized by the Science Based Targets initiative, who stressed that we must reduce emissions by at least 90% by 2050 and remove the remaining 10%.
A practical approach: discover your impact, find ways to reduce it, and start removing.
1. Explore your footprint and learn about ways you could reduce it
Answer questions about your lifestyle
Get personal tips on how to make choices that have positive, meaningful impact
2. Remove 10% or more with our carbon removal service
Start reducing what you can and removing what you can’t. By removing your CO₂ emissions,
You will combine your personal impact with enabling the scale up of our carbon removal solutions including direct air capture technology
Why should I need to remove CO₂ with Climeworks?
The IPCC estimates that by 2050 humanity will need to remove 5-15 billion tons of CO₂ from the air each year to limit global warming to 1.5°C. To do that, we need all available solutions working together, and direct air capture and storage (DAC+S), a technology to remove CO₂ from the air, is expected to contribute a significant part, which also means a fast and drastic scale-up.
To enable this scale-up we want to empower everyone to gain awareness of their footprint. This is the first essential step in becoming a conscious citizen, but it is no longer enough. While reducing emissions should always be the priority, this must be also complemented by removing CO₂ from the air: go beyond offsetting and opt for a quantifiable and permanent solution that will also support the advancement of our direct air capture technology.
If you have never calculated your carbon footprint before, you might be surprised to see how your emissions add up.
We partnered with the great minds at Doconomy who created an easy-to-use calculator to help individuals assess their carbon footprint based on their lifestyle choices. This ecological footprint calculator uses the metric of CO₂e, or carbon dioxide equivalent, which includes CO₂ emissions and those other greenhouse gases with a significant impact on global warming.
People who live in highly industrialized countries like the United States or Switzerland have much higher average carbon footprints than people who live in countries like the Philippines or Guatemala. Thus, a carbon footprint gives you an estimate of how emission-intensive your lifestyle is compared to others, which you can use as a reference point for your climate actions.
There are many guides out there that offer tips on how to reduce your carbon footprint. Five tips that are covered by almost any of these guides are: reduce traveling by plane, decrease the frequency of animal products in your diet, shop for new items only when you really need it and try to find more sustainable options.
With Climeworks’ carbon dioxide removal service, you can take this to the next level, by starting to remove your remaining emissions and past emissions, permanently!
Do your best in reductions, remove the rest with removals
We globally need to reduce billions of tons of CO₂ to stop climate change, which is why every kilogram of CO₂ that is avoided matters, and a carbon footprint is a helpful metric to illustrate your impact and progress.
On top of emissions reductions, removing the CO₂ that has already been emitted is a key step to achieve and then ultimately sustain net zero. Climeworks’ carbon dioxide removal service empowers everyone to take climate action and to remove part of their CO₂ emissions permanently.
Climeworks Pioneers have frequently indicated that a carbon footprint calculator helped them to initiate their journey and to keep a good enough understanding of the impact their lifestyle choices have.
There are many carbon footprint calculators already out there, Climeworks partnered with Doconomy to recommend their solid and easy to use lifestyle calculator tool.
