Digital nomad carbon footprint: the 2026 data guide

Digital nomad carbon footprint: what it is and how to shrink it

For most people, the digital nomad carbon footprint comes to about 6 to 10 tonnes of CO₂e a year, and flights decide where in that range you land. We worked out three typical nomad years with the same figures our calculator uses (DEFRA 2026 for travel and hotels, Ember 2025 for electricity, NASA climate data for heating). A year moving between Lisbon, Gran Canaria and Barcelona comes to 5.8 t. A Southeast Asia loop comes to 10.2 t, and a year across several continents to 10.3 t. This guide breaks down where those tonnes come from, compares a nomad year with staying at home, and ranks what cuts it the most.

How many digital nomads there are, and how they live

Digital nomads are no longer a niche. MBO Partners, which has tracked American digital nomads since 2018, counted 18.5 million in 2025, about 12% of the US workforce, up 153% since 2019. Most now keep a regular job: 11.2 million work for an employer, up 10% in a year, while the number of independent nomads fell 7% to 7.3 million.

How they move matters more for the climate than how many there are. Nomads are slowing down: the average American nomad stayed in 6.2 places in 2025, down from 7.2 in 2023, and spent 6.4 weeks in each, up from 5.4. That is roughly six moves a year, and most of them are flights.

What	Figure (2025)
American digital nomads	18.5 million, about 12% of the US workforce
With a regular employer	11.2 million (+10% in a year)
Independent (freelancers, business owners)	7.3 million (−7%)
Age	35% Gen Z, 40% millennials, 19% Gen X, 6% baby boomers
Places a year	6.2 (6.6 in 2024, 7.2 in 2023)
Time in each place	6.4 weeks (5.7 in 2024, 5.4 in 2023)
Countries with a digital nomad visa	64
Use AI in their work	89%

Source: MBO Partners, State of Independence: Digital Nomads 2025.

The rest of the picture is familiar to anyone who has lived this way. Tourist stays of 30 to 90 days set the rhythm. Homes are furnished rentals, coliving rooms and, between bases, hotels and hostels. Work is a laptop, a coworking desk or a café, and several hours of video calls a week. Getting around is local: scooters in Southeast Asia, ride-hailing in Latin America, walking and the metro in European cities. And most nomads own little: one bag, one laptop, one phone.

Digital nomad carbon footprint: three example years

To put numbers on it, we ran three made-up nomads through the digital nomad carbon calculator. All three eat a mixed diet, buy an average amount, cowork 3 to 4 days a week and spend about 8 hours a week on video calls. Each spends 3 months at home, in a flat heated for that city's climate.

• Europe: home in Berlin; 3 months each in Lisbon, Gran Canaria and Barcelona in a flat; walking and public transport plus some ride-hailing; 4 flights, 7,319 km.
• Southeast Asia loop: home in Amsterdam; Bali 3 months, Chiang Mai 2, Da Nang 2, Kuala Lumpur 1, Bangkok 1; coliving rooms with air conditioning most days; a scooter; 6 flights, 28,790 km.
• Several continents: home in New York; Mexico City 3 months, then Medellín, Buenos Aires, Lisbon and Barcelona for 6 weeks each; flats; ride-hailing; two extra trips home; 10 flights, 41,444 km.

Three things stand out. Flights set nomads apart: 924 kg a year in Europe against 5,040 kg across continents. Everyday life is the same wherever you are: food (1,440 kg a year), shopping (1,200 kg) and waste (300 kg) don't care which country you're in. And where you stay swings with the climate and the grid: air conditioning on Indonesia's and Thailand's coal-heavy grids makes the Asia year's stays (2,340 kg) twice the Europe year's (1,092 kg), even with Berlin's winter in it.

Is a nomad year greener than living in one place?

It depends almost entirely on flights. We compared the three nomads with the same kind of person staying put: living alone in a small flat, eating and shopping the same way, taking a couple of short flights a year. We used the household calculator for those.

A nomad who stays in one region and takes a handful of short flights comes out about the same as, or a little below, the same person at home in Berlin (5.8 t against 6.2 t without a car, 7.3 t with one). Mild winters and no car make up for the flights. A nomad who loops between continents comes out well above: the long-haul flights alone are 3 to 5 tonnes.

For context, the average person on Earth emitted about 4.7 t of CO₂ in 2024. The average EU resident's consumption came to about 7.3 t, and the average American's to 15.8 t (2023). These are CO₂ only, and they include each country's share of public services and industry, so they aren't directly comparable with a personal calculator. They do show the order of magnitude. Source: Our World in Data, from the Global Carbon Budget.

Flights: the biggest part of a nomad footprint

Aviation was about 2.5% of global CO₂ emissions in 2019. Counting the extra warming from contrails and nitrogen oxides at altitude, it accounts for about 3.5% of the warming humans have caused so far. Yet only a minority of people fly in any given year (Our World in Data). For a nomad, flights are usually the largest single line.

We count each flight as the straight-line distance between the two cities times the UK government's 2026 conversion factors (DEFRA). We use DEFRA's factors that include the effects of flying at altitude, which multiply the CO₂ by about 1.7:

Flight	kg CO₂e per passenger-km, economy
Domestic (under about 460 km)	0.229
Short-haul (to about 3,700 km)	0.126
Long-haul	0.117

Cabin class matters a lot because a bigger seat carries a bigger share of the plane. On short-haul flights business class counts 1.5 times economy. On long-haul flights premium economy counts 1.6 times, business 2.9 times and first 4 times.

One long-haul flight outweighs months of everyday life. Lisbon to Bali is 1,587 kg in economy and 4,602 kg in business. That's more than the whole Europe example's flights for a year (924 kg).

Slow travel, in numbers

Slow travel is the most common climate advice for nomads, and the numbers back it, with one catch: what matters is the number of flights, not the number of nights. We took the same 12 months in Southeast Asia and split them between 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 or 12 places, flying between them and back to the start.

Going from one place a month to one every three or four months takes the year from 8.3 t to about 6.7 t, and cuts the flights from 2,820 kg to about 1,032 kg. Below about four places the gains flatten: the remaining flights are the long ones, and how far apart the places are matters more than how many there are.

In Europe the same test gives 4.7 t a year for 2 places and 7.2 t for 12. Taking the train or the bus wherever the next place is a day or less away takes the 12-place year down to 6.7 t, with only 4 flights left.

Trains, buses and ferries

Over land the gap with flying is large. National rail is 0.031 kg CO₂e per passenger-km, a coach 0.039 and a ferry, as a foot passenger, 0.019 (DEFRA 2026). Measured over the same straight-line distance:

Trip	Distance	Plane	Train	Coach
Barcelona – Paris	858 km	108 kg	27 kg	33 kg
Lisbon – Madrid	513 km	65 kg	16 kg	20 kg
Bangkok – Chiang Mai	596 km	75 kg	18 kg	23 kg
Chiang Mai – Da Nang	1,026 km	129 kg	32 kg	40 kg

A train emits about a quarter of a flight over the same distance, and the real gap is larger because short flights also burn extra fuel taking off. Real rail routes are longer than the straight line, so the train figures here are a little low, but not by enough to change the picture.

Where you stay: flats, colivings, hotels and hostels

A furnished flat for a month is one of the lowest-carbon ways to live on the road, and a hotel one of the highest. Hotels run lobbies, laundries, pools and air conditioning around the clock. DEFRA publishes a figure per room-night for 38 countries, and it varies widely: 7 kg in Spain, 19 kg in Portugal, 43 kg in Thailand, 63 kg in Indonesia, 152 kg in the Maldives.

For flats and colivings the electricity comes from the local grid, and grids differ by a factor of 20. The same flat uses the same kilowatt-hours in Lisbon and in Bali, but each one emits five times as much in Bali.

We count a flat as 200 kWh of electricity a month, the household calculator's small home. A coliving room counts 120 kWh, a medium home shared by three. Air conditioning most days adds about 240 kWh a month in hot places; that's our estimate of 1 kW running 8 hours a day.

Heating and air conditioning

Climate control is where a nomad's choice of place shows up in the bill and in the footprint. In cold places it's heating; in hot places it's air conditioning.

For heating, we start from the household calculator's small flat with gas heating: 6,900 kWh a year in London's climate. We scale it by each city's heating degree days, a measure of how cold it gets and for how long, from NASA's POWER climate data (2001–2025). A month in a flat in Prague or Berlin carries about 120 kg of heating. A month in Lisbon carries 36 kg, and a month in the Canary Islands almost none.

Air conditioning works the other way: a flat in Bali running it most days comes to 300 kg a month, against 136 kg without. On the Southeast Asia loop, using it rarely instead of most days saves 1,248 kg a year, more than any other everyday choice.

Where you work: coworking, home or café

A coworking desk isn't free for the climate. A study of coworking spaces estimated 26 MJ, about 7.2 kWh, per coworker per day for the space and its equipment (Vaddadi et al., 2020). Working from a flat or a café adds only your laptop and screen: 0.022 kg an hour, DEFRA's 2026 homeworking factor, or 0.176 kg a day.

A coworking day in…	kg CO₂e
Portugal	0.92
Georgia	1.05
Spain	1.11
Colombia	1.35
Germany	2.38
Mexico	3.41
Thailand	3.93
Indonesia	4.90

A day of coworking in Bali emits about as much as 28 days of working from a flat. Over a year, coworking 4 days a week instead of working from home adds 708 kg on the Southeast Asia loop. That's a reason to cowork somewhere with a clean grid, or to pick a space that runs on renewable power, not a reason to work alone.

Laptop, phone and video calls

Digital work has a footprint, but a small one next to flights. Making a laptop emits about 250 kg CO₂e and a phone about 70 kg (manufacturers' footprints). Kept for four years, that's 80 kg a year; replaced every two years, 160 kg.

Video calls add up for remote workers. Researchers at Purdue, Yale and MIT put an hour of video calling or streaming at 150 to 1,000 g of CO₂, depending on the service and the network. Turning the camera off cuts it by 96%, and streaming in standard definition instead of HD by 86% (Purdue University, 2021). At 0.4 kg an hour, 8 hours of calls a week with the camera on comes to 166 kg a year.

Food, shopping and getting around

These follow you everywhere. Food is the largest of them, and the same in Lisbon or Bali:

Diet	kg CO₂e a month	a year
Vegan	45	540
Vegetarian	90	1,080
Mixed	120	1,440
Meat at most meals	180	2,160

Shopping counts 30 kg a month for someone who lives out of one bag, 100 kg for an average month, and up to 220 kg for heavy buyers. Waste counts 25 kg a month. Getting around a place is small unless you rent a car:

Getting around	Assumed use	kg CO₂e a month
Walking and public transport	5 km a day by bus or metro	16
Taxis and ride-hailing	40 km a week	26
Scooter or motorbike	15 km a day	38
Rental car	30 km a day	148

The biggest levers, ranked

Here is what each change does to the Southeast Asia loop (10.2 t a year), worked out with the calculator:

Change	kg CO₂e a year
Fly economy, not business, on the long flights	−5,220
Run the air conditioning rarely, not most days	−1,248
A flat or coliving instead of a hotel, for a month in Thailand	−1,079
Buy little: one bag instead of an average month	−840
Work from the flat instead of coworking 4 days a week	−708
Two bases (Bali, Chiang Mai) instead of five	−372
Vegetarian instead of a mixed diet	−360
Camera off on calls you only listen to	about −160

The pattern holds for most nomads: how you fly beats almost everything else. That means fewer flights, shorter ones, and economy. After that comes how you stay: a flat over a hotel, and the air conditioning down. Everyday habits come last, though they add up over a year.

How to measure and offset your nomad year

The Coffset digital nomad carbon calculator asks for the places you stay this year and for how long, like "Lisbon 3 months, Bali 2 months". It then works out the flights between them, where you stay and work, and everyday life, with the figures in this guide. It takes about two minutes, in a chat or a private form, and gives a monthly figure.

What remains after you've cut what you can, you can offset by buying verified carbon credits that are then retired in public registries, so nobody can sell them again. Coffset prices credits at €0.04 per kg CO₂e, or 10% less on a monthly subscription. The Europe year in this guide (5.8 t) comes to about €233 paid at once, or about €17 a month on a subscription. The Southeast Asia loop (10.2 t) comes to about €407 at once, or €31 a month. Because the calculator gives a monthly figure, you can offset and retire month by month or the whole year at once, and get a certificate either way.

Offsetting doesn't undo your own emissions; it funds projects that reduce or remove emissions elsewhere. Flying less comes first.

Methodology and assumptions

• Flights: straight-line (great-circle) distance between the cities, in the order listed and back to the start or to home. DEFRA 2026 factors with the effects of flying at altitude, by distance band and cabin. Stopovers and detours aren't added, so routes with connections count a little low.
• Trains, buses and ferries: straight-line distance × DEFRA 2026 national rail (0.031), coach (0.039) and ferry foot passenger (0.019) factors.
• Stays: hotels by DEFRA 2026 room-night factors for 38 countries, else 25 kg a night; hostels 3 kg a night. Flats 200 kWh and coliving rooms 120 kWh of electricity a month on the country's grid (Ember 2025), plus air conditioning (240 kWh a month, an estimate) in hot places.
• Heating: a small flat's gas heating, 6,900 kWh a year in London's climate (the household calculator's figure), scaled by each city's heating degree days (NASA POWER, 2001–2025) × 0.182 kg/kWh. A year's heating is spread evenly over the months. Nothing is counted within 23.5° of the equator, or for hotels and hostels, whose per-night figures include it. Coliving rooms count 60%.
• Work: coworking 7.2 kWh per person per day on the local grid; working from home or a café 0.022 kg an hour of equipment (DEFRA 2026 homeworking).
• Everyday life: food, shopping and waste from the household calculator; video calls 0.4 kg an hour with the camera on; laptop 250 kg and phone 70 kg over the years you keep them.
• Home months: months not spent travelling count as time at home, in a heated flat on the home country's grid.
• Everything is per person and in CO₂e, the warming effect of all greenhouse gases expressed as CO₂. The results are estimates from a few answers, not a measurement. The Coffset methodology has the details.

Sources

• MBO Partners, Digital Nomads 2025: number of American digital nomads, age, places a year, weeks per place, visas.
• UK Government greenhouse gas conversion factors 2026 (DEFRA): flights, rail, coach, ferry, taxi, motorbike, car, hotels by country, homeworking, natural gas.
• Ember yearly electricity data: CO₂e intensity of each country's electricity, 2025.
• NASA POWER climatology: heating degree days for each city, 2001–2025.
• Vaddadi et al. (2020), Towards a conceptual framework of direct and indirect environmental effects of co-working: energy per coworker per day.
• Purdue University (2021), Turn off that camera during virtual meetings: footprint of video calls and streaming.
• Our World in Data, What share of global CO₂ emissions come from aviation?: aviation's share of CO₂ and of warming.
• Our World in Data, CO₂ emissions: emissions per person, territorial and consumption-based (Global Carbon Budget).