How To Find Your Van's Carbon Footprint
Our Carbon Footprint Calculator provides the annual CO2 output of vans powered by either an internal combustion engine 'ICE' (such as petrol, diesel or hybrid vans), or electric vans.
Getting Started
To begin your carbon footprint calculation choose a van by selecting the manufacturer, model and derivative from the option boxes.
If your van has a combustion engine or is a hybrid then we'll retrieve the recorded Worldwide Harmonised Light Vehicles Test Procedure ("WLTP') CO2 output figure for the van.
Just enter your annual mileage and click on the 'Calculate' button to see the results.
You can change your mileage as often as you want and then see a recalculation of the results just by clicking on the 'Calculate' button.
Plug-In Hybrid Vans
For hybrid vans the data changes slightly. CO2 is measured according to the ratio of electric mode driving compared to driving using the combustion engine over the whole of the WLTP cycle.
This reduces the CO2 output of a plug-in hybrid van compared to just a petrol or diesel van, but the reduction is not as much as for an electric van.
Please note that this only applies to plug-in hybrids and not to non-plug-in hybrids.
Non-plug-in hybrids are often called 'mild' hybrids and are just petrol or diesel vans with a small electric motor to assist the combustion engine.
Electric Vans
For electric vans, when UK power stations create the electricity used for recharging they are typically burning fossil fuels in the form of gas for around 40%-50% of the electricity generated.
To allow for this in the calculation, we've included the CO2 created for each kilowatt of energy required to recharge an electric van for an hour.
Currently this is around 0.233kgs of CO2 produced for each kilowatt hour of electricity when fossil fuels are used at the power station.
We therefore multiply the CO2 output of electric vans by 40% in our calculations to take account of the use of fossil fuels in generating electricity.
For example, if the powerstation produces 33 grammes of CO2 for each hour of charging an electric van, then the effect will be 13 grammes of CO2 produced.
Renewable Tarrifs
If you only ever recharge your electric van by a tariff which uses renewable energy as the sole source of electricity then you can adjust the CO2 GPK/m value to take account of this.
Just set the CO figure to '0' and we won't calculate the output for electric vans (you will need to do this each time you choose an electric van as we automatically reset the value when you choose a petrol/diesel/hybrid van).
Alternatively, if you use a renewable tariff part of the time you can adjust the CO2 figure according to the percentage of time recharged from renewables.
For example, if you recharge from renewables for 50% of the time then halve the CO2 figure displayed.
Internal Combustion Engines
CO2 output for petrol and diesel vans is measured in grammes of CO2 per kilometre driven. We convert this from kilometres to miles so you can see the tonnes of CO2 produced by your van.
Comparing Cars
To compare the carbon footprint of different petrol, diesel, hybrid and electric vans go to our Carbon Footprint Comparator.
This allows you to see the impact of the CO2 output of different types of vans side-by-side.
We've also got a table of the CO2 impact of recharging an electric van - click on this link to see the best and worst performers.
Our Other Carbon Footprint Calculators
Here are the links to our other carbon footprint calculators;
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