🏅 Olympic Games Sustainability Calculator

What this calculator does

This tool estimates the carbon footprint of attending the Olympic Games as a spectator, combining your round-trip travel to the host city with the emissions from your hotel stay while you’re there. It’s a rough planning estimate, not an official Games carbon audit.

How the estimate is calculated

Travel emissions use commonly cited passenger transport factors: about 0.150 kg CO2e per passenger-kilometer for flying, 0.171 kg/km for driving, 0.105 kg/km for bus travel, and 0.041 kg/km for rail, multiplied by your round-trip distance and the number of people in your group. Accommodation emissions use an average of about 20 kg CO2e per person per hotel night, a figure in line with published hotel-sector sustainability benchmarking. The tree-offset figure assumes a mature tree absorbs roughly 21 kg of CO2 per year.

For context, the International Olympic Committee has pushed host cities toward lower-carbon Games — Paris 2024 targeted roughly half the direct emissions of the London 2012 and Rio 2016 average — but for most spectators, personal travel and lodging still make up the largest share of the footprint tied to attending, which is what this calculator focuses on.

• Figures are general estimates for educational and travel-planning purposes, not a certified emissions report.
• Actual emissions vary by aircraft/vehicle type, occupancy, route, and hotel efficiency.