What are government emissions?

Government emissions come from the public goods we benefit from as citizens, but can’t directly control.

The services portion of government emissions includes the emissions from local, state, and federal government operations. In total, it makes up about eight percent of gross emissions. The biggest contributors in this category are power used by public schools, fuel burned by the military, and energy used to construct and outfit all the roads, buildings, and vehicles operated by the government.

The forest portion of government is made up of “carbon sinks." About nine percent of the carbon we all emit is sucked from the atmosphere by forests growing on US soil. Because they reduce emissions, forests are represented as a negative number in your footprint.

When we add it all together, the sinks actually outweigh the services emissions, so the average American has a slightly negative government footprint!

Tell us about your own shared services emissions, or get and share tips on reducing them.

← return to our knowledge base index