UK Car Carbon Emissions
Use the form below to find out your car CO2 emissions, the more carbon emissions the less environmentally friendly the car! Low carbon emission cars have a carbon dioxide emission rate of less than 100g/km. Very highly polluting cars have a carbon emission rate of over 200g/km.
If you drive your car 10,000 miles per year and have an average polluting car (i.e 160g/km of carbon emissions) then every year your car will emit 2.6tonnes of Carbon Dioxide. If you wish it offset this amount by planting trees you would need to plant at least 4 trees for every year you spend driving the car.
There are new rules coming into force that will ensure car markets cut carbon dioxide emissions on new fleets of cars. At present the average carbon emissions is around 163g/km in the UK, the new rules will force this to be reduced to 130g/km on new cars by 2012. Most of the reduction is expected to come through improvements in technology, greater use of biofuels and the promotion of smoother driving techniques.
The average figure is arrived at by looking at the car sales for that year as a whole, so for example a car maker is still allowed to make and sell cars that pollute far worse than this, as long as there is a balancing sale of cars that emit far less carbon dioxide than the target level.
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Date Added: Wednesday 15th April 2009
"Thank you so much! This was very helpful for my school project."
Anonymous
Date Added: Thursday 3rd July 2008
"I have been searching online for more than 40 minutes trying to find the average carbon emissions of the average car in the UK. Thanks! Could you tell us what year this data is current for?"
Kelly