The following information may be useful for your studies or research

Emissions are thus calculated from a known quantity such as fuel burned, or units of electricity consumed. Combustion of fuel is a stoichiometric chemical reaction, so the mass of CO2 emissions can be directly related to fuel burn. Thus for example, for every kWh of energy supplied by gas or fuel oil, the CO2 emissions are 0.206 or 0.281 kgCO2, respectively.2Emissions resulting from the use of electricity are more complex to calculate as they depend on the mix of generating plant in the host country. However, the total emissions from all plant can be calculated from the known fossil fuel burn, and compared to the total end consumption to give a national emissions factor for

electricity use. For further information

Ref: Calculating The Carbon Dioxide Emissions Of Flights by Dr Christian N. Jardine

February 2009

Environmental Change Institute ;Oxford University Centre for the

Environment ; Oxford;

www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/.../jardine09-carboninflights.pdf

check the following information if it will be of value to your work.

When seeking to determine the extent of emissions from an activity, it is impractical

to measure the mass of emissions directly. Emissions are thus calculated from a

known quantity such as fuel burned, or units of electricity consumed. Combustion of fuel is a stoichiometric chemical reaction, so the mass of CO2

emissions can be directly related to fuel burn. Thus for example, for every kWh of energy supplied by gas or fuel oil, the CO2 emissions are 0.206 or 0.281 kgCO2

, respectively.

2Emissions resulting from the use of electricity are more complex to calculate as they depend on the mix of generating plant in the host country. However, the total

emissions from all plant can be calculated from the known fossil fuel burn, and

compared to the total end consumption to give a national emissions factor for

electricity use. Calculating The Carbon Dioxide Emissions Of Flights

Final Report ECI, University of Oxford

2 Transport represents a different challenge. For personal transport, fuel consumption can be monitored and converted into a corresponding mass of emissions by multiplying by the appropriate emissions factor ( e.g. for petrol 2.317 kgCO2/litre).However, where fuel consumption is not monitored, some degree of estimation is necessary. The distance travelled, as logged by an odometer, can be converted into fuel burn (and therefore into a mass of emissions) by making assumptions about the fuel efficiency of the vehicle. The fuel efficiency of different vehicles varies markedly, so any single emissions factor is a considerable source of potential error. If the model of vehicle is known then the manufacturers measured fuel efficiency can be used, but if not, a crude assumption must be made as to what is an ‘average’ or ‘typical vehicle. Furthermore, even if the vehicle

model and its fuel efficiency are known, real fuel burn can vary from this value measured under standard test conditions, due to environmental factors such as headwinds, urbanvs. motorway driving, hilly vs.level terrain. A further source of inaccuracy comes when attributing emissions from a journey to individuals – per person emissions are naturally highly dependent on vehicle occupancy. Such arguments regarding the calculation of emissions from transport are particularly

pertinent to the aviation sector. Different greenhouse gas emissions calculators give widely varying results for the same flight due to variations in the underlying

assumptions made in the calculator methodology. For example, two different

emissions calculators estimate emissions for a return flight from London to New York to be 1.53 a or 3.48btCO2e, a variation of more than a factor of 2. This highlights the huge uncertainty in calculating aviation emissions,and its critical dependence on the methodology adopted. Whilst, calculator developers are increasingly transparent about the assumptions they make, and the reasoning behind them, there is as yet no internationally agreed and adopted methodology for

the calculation of aviation emissions. As will be discussed below, this work aims to remove some the uncertainty around the underlying assumptions by using higher quality input data, and contribute towards the development of an intern

ational standard. Much of the uncertainty about calculating the environmental impact of aviation emissions derives from the fact that emissions at altitude can instigate a host of chemical reactions in the atmosphere, which each have global warming and cooling effects over a variety of timescales, varying from less than 1day to several hundredyears.

3

The overall effect is certainly one of an increased warming effect compared

to emissions at ground level, but the extent of this remains open to debate, both in

terms of how to calculate the magnitude of this effect, and what the value should be. Historically the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) quoted a value of 2.7 for this multiplier, with a range of 2-4.

4

Climate scientists have been able to update this study more accurately and have   published a value of 1.9.

5

More recent studies have questioned the validity of this approach and estimated a value of 1.2 for this effect.

6,7

Detail on the assumptions underlying these figure

s is beyond the scope

of this paper, but can be found in the literature.

3

For the purposes of this work, it is

only necessary to note that some calculators may us

e a multiplier as high as 4, whilst others may regard the issue of a multiplier too contentious, and deal only with the warming effect of carbon dioxide (i.e.a multiplier of 12). Irrespective of the use of a multiplier for aviation emissions, there is still a large uncertainty in calculating the CO2 emissions. For a passenger, the fuel burn will be unknown, so CO2 emissions must be calculated based solely on the point of origin and destination, and a series of assumptions about the plane itself.

Do you know how unit of CO2 that is characterized in the fuel of the specific airline you are interested in? If you know that, what is the estimated quantity per flight? Multiply that by the distance covered and the associated results gives you the CO2 output. CO2 can generally be calculated as the unit output of total energy burn given that you know that associated CO2 output per biomass/fuel burn.

Here is a good resource that provide some insights: Calculating The Carbon Dioxide Emissions Of Flights" http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/downloads/jardine09-carboninflights.pdf.

I hope this was helpful. 

Few parameters you need to know:

1. Know the emissions factor of the specific airline fuel (kgCO2/litre).

2. Know the estimated distance travel (in miles or kilometers)

3. Know the energy or fuel efficiency of the airline (usually in percent %)

4. You might want to consider the altitude at which the airline is navigating as that could impact the fuel chemical state.

5. Are you interested in origin to destination estimation of emissions as that would be viable.

6. You need to know the airline fuel burn data.

7. You have to decide allocating emissions by seat of passengers.

Thank you ALL, Your answers are appreciated. They surely give a good start for my PhD study.