Car vs plane discrepancy?

[pauleustice]

Hi there. We just ran some numbers through it seems there is a discrepancy:

• 14.60 kg CO2e
• 83.42 km car
• 29% Paris-London

The flight distance from London to Paris is ~342km, so 29% of that would equate to 99km. Are 99km / person / flight really equivalent to 83km / person / car?

Cars

A European Environment Agency report states 55 g of CO2 / person / km for an average car.

So, 14600 g / 55g = 265 km

Planes

CO2e from a 737 is 115g / passenger / km.

3.15 342 29% = 11.405kg. This is ~20% off the kg CO2e figure that your tool provides, so can probably be put down to the type of plane. But the car figure seems quite off.

Are we missing something please?

[AndreiRosu]

Based on this scientific paper their CO2 consumption references are different:

CO2e of Driving and Air Travel gCO2e was contextualized by estimating an equivalence in terms of distance travelled by car or by passenger aircraft. Previous studies had estimated the emissions of the average passenger car in Europe as 175 gCO2e km−1[77, 87] (251 gCO2e km−1 in the United States[88]). The emissions of flying on a jet aircraft in economy class were estimated between 139 and 244 gCO2e km−1 per person, depending on the length of the flight.[77] Three reference flights were used: Paris to London (50 000 gCO2e), New York to San Francisco (570 000 gCO2e), and New York to Melbourne (2 310 000 gCO2e).[89]

Taking that data into consideration, the results would be correct:

• Car: 14600 g CO2 / 82.42 km = 175.01 g CO2 / person
• Plane: 14600 g CO2 / 99 km = 147.47 g CO2 / person