How do we calculate the CO2 emissions at Skipr?

Replacing the usage of a car by various other means of transportation is brave choice, but also a change for which the environment is grateful. One of the main negative aspect of using your car on a daily basis is the CO2 emissions it generates and the impact it has on the environment.

Sometimes we tend to forget how much an impact changing our way of moving and commuting can have and that is why here, at Skipr, we took the time to analyse the impact you can have by doing so.

But how do we calculate the CO2 emissions? 

First thing to know is that we use CO2 emissions factors (expressed in CO2g/km) which indicates the amount of CO2 emitted per kilometre traveled, for each type of vehicle.

The calculation is the following, CO2 emissions (g) = distance traveled (km) x CO2 emission factor (g/km)

This means that for example, an employee using an electric scooter emits 13g of CO2 per kilometre traveled. On a 5km journey, it will therefore generate a total of 65g of CO2.

To make it even clearer, we associated a monetary ratio representing the average number of kilometres traveled for 1€ spent with a mobility operator (expressed in km/€), which allows us to convert every mobility expense into kilometres.

This gives us this calculation, kilometres traveled (km) = monetary ratio (km/€) x amount spent (€)

For example, 1€ spent for the rental of an electric scooter represent a distance of about 1,69km. An employee who spent 4€ for a scooter trip will have traveled about 6.76km.

We thus determine the CO2 emitted during each journey by combining these 2 factors:

Which gives us in the end [CO2 emissions (g) = CO2 emission factor (g/km) x monetary ratio (km/€) x amount spent (€)]

For example, an employee having spent 7€ for a scooter trip will have emitted: 13 (g/km) x 1,69 (km/€) x 7 (€) = 153,8g of CO2.

We then calculate the CO2 savings, compared to the same trip made by car (based on an average car with fuel, with 1 passenger).

We can therefore see that the same trip by car would have represented 2022,9g of CO2. The CO2 saved on this trip is therefore 1869,1g. Quite a lot.

At the moment, in the case of expenses made with services having several types of vehicles (e.g. public transport ticket allowing to use bus, trams or metro), we take the weighted average of CO2 emissions of each mode of transport.

We intend to refine this in the future, by asking users to report their actual usage of these modes of transport, but this already speaks volume. 

Reducing our CO2 emissions is a real challenge, but one that we are glad to tackle here, at Skipr. It is also thanks to our users that we are able to do so and if you are not yet part of the mouvement, why not start now and take a walk on the mobility side?

Our sources

We wanted to be as precise as possible and to do so, relied on public data (e.g. ADEME), as well as the expertise of CO2Logic, an environmental consulting firm.

These calculation are based on the CO2 emissions per kilometre of each transportation service, validated by CO2Logic.

When a provider has several vehicle types (ex. Tram/Bus/Metro for STIB) or different carburant type (ex. Hybrid or fuel cars for Uber), we take the average of CO2 emissions of the different vehicles/carburants.

We also calculated the km traveled per € for providers, in order to translate expenses into distances and evaluate the CO2 emissions.

As already mentioned, the car emissions we took as a benchmark are based on an average fuel car, with 1 passenger. (ADEME Base Carbone)

Reducing our CO2 emissions is a real challenge, but one that we are glad to tackle here, at Skipr. It is also thanks to our users that we are able to do so