How to calculate your carbon footprint (for Indian households)
A step-by-step method for Indian households: multiply what you use (electricity units, LPG, fuel, flights, food) by a sourced emission factor, add it up, and understand how uncertain the answer is.
Overview
To calculate your carbon footprint, list what you used in a year (electricity units, LPG cylinders, litres of fuel or kilometres driven, flights and main foods), multiply each amount by an emission factor in kilograms of CO2 per unit, and add the results. For Indian households, electricity, cooking fuel and vehicles are the easiest parts to measure well.
Photo: "Electricity meters in India" by Balaji Kasirajan, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
This guide shows the factors to use in India, where each one comes from, and a fully worked illustrative example. Figures are as of October 2026.
Sources: Central Electricity Authority, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, User Guide Version 22.0 (August 2026); Central Electricity Authority, CO2 Baseline Database User Guide Version 21.0 (November 2025); Central Electricity Authority, CO2 Baseline Database User Guide Version 20.0 (December 2024); 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Volume 2 Energy, Chapter 1; 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Volume 5 Waste; India GHG Program (WRI India, CII, TERI), India Specific Road Transport Emission Factors, Version 1.0 (2015); Bharat Petroleum, Natural Gas Conversions (reproducing PPAC conversion basis); ICAO Carbon Emissions Calculator and methodology; Our World in Data, Which form of transport has the smallest carbon footprint? (UK DESNZ 2022 conversion factors); Our World in Data, Greenhouse gas emissions per kilogram of food product (Poore and Nemecek 2018, Science); Our World in Data, You want to reduce the carbon footprint of your food? Focus on what you eat, not whether your food is local; Our World in Data, CO2 emissions per capita (Global Carbon Budget)
This article was prepared with AI assistance and checked by the GreenEye team against the sources shown in each section.
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