Methodology · version 2026.2-illustrative
How we estimate
Canopy is a portfolio demo. Its factors are rounded and illustrative, chosen to show where a footprint tends to concentrate, not to certify it. This page explains them plainly.
The calculator
Each of the four sections turns everyday quantities into tonnes of CO₂-equivalent a year:
- Home energy. Monthly electricity × 12 × your region’s grid factor, reduced for a renewable tariff (never to zero), plus heating by fuel (0.18 kg/kWh for gas, 0.25 for oil; heat pumps divide by a typical efficiency of 3). Shared across your household.
- Travel. Weekly kilometres by mode × 52, plus flights at about 2,200 km for a short return trip and 14,000 km for a long one, with a ×1.9 uplift for warming effects at altitude beyond CO₂.
- Food. A diet baseline from 1.5 t (plant-based) to 3.3 t (meat with most meals), nudged for seasonal food and waste.
- Shopping. Monthly spend × 12 × a kilograms-per-dollar factor per category, reduced if you buy second-hand.
| Region | Grid kg CO₂e / kWh | Average t / person / yr |
|---|---|---|
| North America | 0.37 | 14.5 |
| Europe | 0.25 | 8.1 |
| East Asia | 0.55 | 8.4 |
| South Asia | 0.71 | 2.1 |
| Latin America & Caribbean | 0.20 | 3.4 |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 0.45 | 1.6 |
Why every number is a range
The same answer can mean different things: a kilowatt-hour from a windy night, a meal grown in a heated greenhouse. So each category carries an uncertainty, and we combine them into the ± you see beside every estimate:
±10%
home energy
±15%
travel
±20%
food
±30%
shopping
Removal and avoidance
Takes CO₂ out of the atmosphere and stores it: in trees, soils, seagrass, char or rock. Needed for any credible long-term path to net zero, because some emissions can’t be avoided.
Stops emissions that would otherwise have happened: cleaner cookstoves, rewetted peat, protected forests. Valuable, but it doesn’t take carbon back out, so we never count it as equivalent to removal.
That’s why the mechanism is a required field on every project card, cart line and certificate, and why the cart shows your removal-to-avoidance mix. Canopy says “compensate”, never “cancel out”, and makes no carbon-neutral claims.
Permanence
How long stored carbon is expected to stay stored. Biological storage can reverse (fire, storms, a change of land use), so those projects hold back a buffer pool of credits to cover losses.
No storage
Avoided emissions; nothing is stored.
Under 40 yrs
Biological storage with meaningful reversal risk.
40–100 yrs
Longer-lived ecosystems with buffer pools.
100+ yrs
Geological or mineral storage and stable char.
What this demo isn’t
- Not a certified footprint, an audit, or a reporting tool.
- Not a real marketplace: every project, developer, registry (Verdant Ledger Registry, Open Carbon Standard) and verifier (Fieldmark Assurance, Northlight Audit) is fictional, and coordinates are approximate.
- Not a retirement: certificates say “Demo — no real credits retired” on every artefact.