Contrail Impact Counter

Contrail Impact Counter

The idea behind the Contrail Impact Counter is to give an indication of the magnitude of the climate problem of contrails and to show how much CO2 equivalent we could potentially save if we avoided warming contrails.

It is important to keep in mind that there is considerable uncertainty around the climate impact of contrails, so the counter can only estimate the potential climate savings so far this year.

This is how we arrived at the numbers we did:

In 2019, the aviation industry released 1.03 billion tons of CO2 from burning fuels.

Conservatively, the climate impact of contrails is equivalent to half of the fuel consumption, meaning contrails are responsible for 500 million tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) using the GWP100 metric. The Contrails Impact Counter starts at 0 tons of CO2e at the beginning of the year and counts up to reach 500 million tons by the end of the year.

A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year (in the US) - https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/tailpipe-greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle. Removing 500 million tons of CO2e would then be the equivalent of taking 108 million cars off the roads for a year.                       

A typical coal-fired power plant in the US emits 3.5 million metric tons of CO2 per year - https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11. Removing 500 million tons of CO2e would then be the equivalent of shutting down 142 coal-fired power plants for a year.