What is CO2e?

MOPRIM Move Together uses CO2e values to calculate emissions of different vehicles. CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent or CO2 equivalent) is a metric measure used to compare the emissions from various greenhouse gases on the basis of their global warming potential (GWP), by converting amounts of other gases to the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide with the same global warming potential.

Since vehicles or transportation in general produces different kind of greenhouse gases, CO2e suits well for estimating the true effect. For example, the GWP for methane is 25 and for nitrous oxide 298. This means that emissions of 1 metric tonne of methane and nitrous oxide respectively is equivalent to emissions of 25 and 298 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Also, when calculating vehicle CO2e lifetime emissions, emissions arising from vehicle production and disposal, fuel production and actual CO2 exhaust emissions are also included. This means that even full electric cars and bicycles have CO2e value. For example, a full electric car production is producing significantly more emissions than internal combustion engine (ICE) car, mainly due to battery production. Using the full electric car is on the other hand a lot more environmentally friendly than ICE car, although this varies country by country based on how the electricity for the electric car is produced.

MOPRIM Move Together uses CO2e values that take into account these aspects of the vehicle’s lifetime for vehicles ranging from a bicycle (5 grams of CO2 per kilometer) to an airplane (average of 223 grams of CO2 per kilometer).

When adding carpooling information to the trip (adding passengers), 80% of the emission values are taken into account.