How Much CO2 Emissions Per Litre of Diesel

When calculating COemissions the amount of fuel you use is more important than the fuel efficiency of your car/truck/van.

It’s important to know how much COemissions are created per litre of diesel so you can calculate your overall emissions.

A gas guzzling truck that never gets driven will still use less diesel than a fuel efficient van that is driving all the time.

While fuel efficiency is important you need to look at the quantity of fuel you are burning to understand your impact on global warming.

How Much COEmissions Per Litre Of Diesel

According to ComCar on average:

a litre of diesel produces 2.6391 kgs of CO2

a gallon of diesel produces 22.0242 lbs of CO2

The reason that the emission weight is so high is that oxygen is added to created the COwhen the fuel is burned. Thus making the emission weight much higher than the starting weight of the fuel.

How Much Diesel For 1 Tonne of COEmissions?

To emit 1 tonne of COinto the atmosphere requires burning 378.92 litres of diesel.

To emit 1 ton of COinto the atmosphere requires burning 90.81 gallons of petrol.

While some vehicles produce less COemissions than others this rough guide should suffice for most people’s use.

Petrol is slightly different. Click here to see how much COemissions petrol produces.

How To Calculate How Much COEmissions Your Car Creates

Calculating the COemissions you create when you drive is easy.

Just simply keep track of how much fuel you put into your tank each time you fill up.

The calculation is:

number of litres x 2.6391 = kgs of COemissions

or:

number of gallons x 22.0242 = lbs of COemissions

So if I fill up 80L of diesel I can assume I just used 80L of diesel. So the emmissions I created would be calculated as

80 x 2.6391 = 211.13 kgs of COemissions

How To Calculate COEmissions per 100km

People love to talk about fuel efficiency in Litres/100km for some reason.

Calculating your COemissions per 100km isn’t too hard.

First find out how much fuel your car uses per 100km then times by 2.6391 (the kgs of COemissions created per litre of fuel).

For example my Mercedes-Benz Sprinter is estimate to use 11.7L/100km.

11.7 x 2.6391 = 30.88 kgs of COemissions per 100km

As mentioned about this isn’t going to be as accurate or informative as simply calculating petrol usage at the pump and working out your carbon emissions that way, but it does help you to choose driving at more fuel efficient car whenever you can.

2 thoughts on “How Much CO2 Emissions Per Litre of Diesel”

  1. Please note that the section headings on this page are all wrong. They refer to petrol, when they should refer to Diesel fuel.

  2. I need to know how many kilos of CO2 are produced by burning 1 liter of unleaded gasoline (petrol) and 1 liter of Diesel.
    Also: how many kilos of CO2 are released by driving 1 km in an electric car. Can you help out?

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