Enter the distance you ride and what you would otherwise have taken, and it returns grams per kilometre for both, plus your annual saving.
How much CO₂ does riding an electric scooter save?
Replacing a petrol car trip with an e-scooter cuts operational emissions by more than 90%. A petrol car doing 8 L/100 km emits about 185 g of CO₂ per km; a scooter using 18 Wh/km emits 1–13 g/km depending on the electricity grid. Replacing a walk or bike ride adds emissions instead.
Grid intensity is the variable that decides everything
Carbon intensity — grams of CO₂ per kilowatt-hour generated — differs by more than an order of magnitude between countries, and Ember publishes the figures country by country. France and Norway run well under 100 g/kWh thanks to nuclear and hydro; the UK has fallen to roughly 160–200 g/kWh; the US averages around 370 g/kWh; India and Poland sit above 600 g/kWh.
For a scooter it barely matters: even on the dirtiest grid on earth, 22 Wh/km at 700 g/kWh is about 17 g CO₂ per kilometre against 170–200 g for a petrol car. For an electric car, grid intensity decides whether the saving is dramatic or merely solid — around 12 g/km in France, closer to 130 g/km on a coal-heavy grid.
The table uses approximate recent national averages — the same values as the calculator — with 90% charging efficiency applied to the per-kilometre figures.
| Country | g CO₂/kWh | Scooter at 18 Wh/km | EV at 18 kWh/100 km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Norway | 30 | 0.6 g/km | 6 g/km |
| Sweden | 45 | 0.9 g/km | 9 g/km |
| France | 60 | 1.2 g/km | 12 g/km |
| Canada | 130 | 2.6 g/km | 26 g/km |
| Spain | 170 | 3.4 g/km | 34 g/km |
| United Kingdom | 180 | 3.6 g/km | 36 g/km |
| EU average | 250 | 5.0 g/km | 50 g/km |
| Italy | 300 | 6.0 g/km | 60 g/km |
| United States | 370 | 7.4 g/km | 74 g/km |
| Germany | 380 | 7.6 g/km | 76 g/km |
| Japan | 470 | 9.4 g/km | 94 g/km |
| Australia | 530 | 10.6 g/km | 106 g/km |
| China | 550 | 11.0 g/km | 110 g/km |
| India | 630 | 12.6 g/km | 126 g/km |
| Poland | 660 | 13.2 g/km | 132 g/km |
What you are comparing against
These are the figures the calculator uses for each “replaced” option. Car figures follow the fuel economy and occupancy you enter; the others are typical per-passenger values.
| Mode | g CO₂/km | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Petrol car, 8 L/100km, one occupant | 185 | The usual baseline |
| Diesel car, 6 L/100km, one occupant | 161 | Better economy, dirtier fuel |
| Hybrid car | 110 | Best in stop-start traffic |
| Taxi or ride-hail | 220 | Includes empty repositioning |
| City bus | 95 | Highly dependent on how full it is |
| Petrol motorbike | 100 | Small engine, poor emissions control |
| Electric scooter | 1–13 | Grid dependent |
| Walking or cycling | 0 | Still unbeaten |
Which trip you replace matters most
Swapping a car trip for a scooter trip removes 90%+ of the emissions. Swapping a walk or a train ride for a scooter adds emissions. The honest accounting question is not "how clean is my scooter" but "what did this ride replace" — and studies of shared-scooter fleets have repeatedly found that many rides replaced walking or transit, not driving.
Private ownership behaves better than shared fleets on this measure, because there is no rebalancing van and the vehicle lasts years rather than months. If your scooter genuinely replaced a car commute or a string of ride-hail trips, the saving in this calculator is real.
Tailpipe versus lifecycle
The figures here are operational: fuel burned or electricity generated, per kilometre travelled. Petrol releases 2.31 kg of CO₂ per litre burned, diesel 2.68 kg. Those numbers are fixed chemistry, and adding roughly 20% covers extraction and refining if you want well-to-wheel.
Manufacturing is the honest caveat. Building a battery has a carbon cost — very small for a scooter pack, significant for a car — which EVs typically pay back within 20,000–50,000 km depending on the grid. A scooter pays it back in a few hundred kilometres, which is the strongest environmental argument in micromobility.
How the calculator works
Your vehicle’s emissions are its consumption per kilometre, grossed up for charging losses, multiplied by your grid’s carbon intensity. The replaced trip is either worked out from fuel economy and occupancy (cars) or taken from the comparison table above. The annual saving is the difference per kilometre multiplied by your yearly distance, and the tree equivalent divides it by 21 kg — roughly what one mature tree absorbs in a year.
The formula
diesel car g/km = ( L/100km ÷ 100 ) × 2680 ÷ occupancy
// 2.31 kg CO₂ per litre of petrol, 2.68 per litre of diesel — fixed chemistry
Related calculators
Emissions and money move together. The EV versus petrol calculator shows the running-cost gap behind the same journey, and the charging cost calculator breaks down what the electricity itself costs.
Questions riders actually ask
How much CO₂ does an electric scooter produce per km?
Between about 1 and 15 g CO₂ per kilometre from electricity, depending on the grid and how thirsty the scooter is: roughly 1 g in Norway or France, 4 g on the UK grid, and 13–15 g on a coal-heavy grid such as Poland or India. A petrol car emits 170–200 g/km, so a scooter is a 93–99% reduction on the same journey.
What carbon intensity should I use for my country?
Pick your country from the list, which uses recent national averages. If you want precision, your grid operator publishes live intensity — the UK, France, California and Australia all have public feeds, and intensity can halve between a windy night and a still evening peak.
Does home solar make my scooter zero-carbon?
Operationally, close to it, if you charge during generation. The honest framing is that solar power you use for charging is power you did not export, so the saving depends on what your grid would otherwise have burned — which is still a large win on most grids.
Are electric scooters greener than e-bikes?
They are similar, with the e-bike slightly ahead because pedalling supplies part of the energy and the battery is smaller. Both are an order of magnitude cleaner per kilometre than any car, electric or otherwise, and both are beaten by walking and cycling.
What does the tree equivalent mean?
It converts your annual saving using roughly 21 kg of CO₂ absorbed per mature tree per year. It is a rough analogy for scale, not an offset claim — trees absorb carbon over decades and at highly variable rates, so treat it as intuition rather than accounting.
Sources
Primary and reference sources for the physics, standards and figures used on this page.
- Electricity Data ExplorerEmber
- Carbon intensity of electricity generationOur World in Data