A comparison of fine arts carbon footprint calculators

IHME Helsinki has been calculating its carbon footprint using the calculator provided by the Hiilifiksu järjestö (Carbon Smart Organisation) since 2020. The calculation for 2024 was done using this familiar tool. We were also involved in developing the Vihreä Taide (Green Art) carbon footprint calculator, published last year, while our attention was further drawn to the Green Producers’ Tool suited to art production. This prompted us to compare the different calculators.

We tested the new calculators and, at the same time, considered whether the Hiilifiksu järjestö project calculator was still our best option for calculating emissions. We entered the same data from our 2024 emission sources into the new calculators, as well as into the Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator. This gave us a good overview of the structure and features of each calculator.

Why are there different calculators?

There are a wide range of carbon footprint calculators available, differing in what they measure, who they are aimed at, and what data they require. Personal calculators estimate the climate impact of an individual’s everyday choices, while those aimed at businesses calculate the emissions for a whole organisation. Product calculators, meanwhile, focus on the life-cycle emissions of individual products or services.

The target group for a calculator has a decisive influence on the type of tool it is worth building. For example, for a consumer-oriented calculator, it makes no sense to include all the variables related to the life-cycle emissions of an individual product. Also, for companies and industries it is advisable to tailor the calculator to their key emission sources. A carefully defined and targeted calculator is not only more accurate, but also more user-friendly.

The calculators in our comparison

The calculators in our comparison are also designed from different perspectives and for different target groups:

• The Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator is specifically targeted at the needs of organisations, and was developed as a result of a Sitra-funded project. (Available only in Finnish)
• The Vihreä Taide calculator is a tool developed by the Vihreä Taide project led by Frame Contemporary Art Finland and its steering group to calculate the carbon and material footprint of artworks and exhibitions.
• The Green Producers’ Tool was originally developed by the Norwegian Green Producers Club to calculate the carbon footprint of TV and film productions, but has since been extended to other cultural events and productions.

The Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator and Vihreä Taide calculator can be used free of charge – the former is in Finnish, the latter in both English and Finnish. The Green Producers’ Tool is the only paid option in the comparison (from €450/year) and is available in English and Norwegian.

Being free of charge is a clear advantage, but a fee can also bring added value. Both the Hiilifiksu järjestö and Vihreä Taide calculators are currently not actively updated and do not provide user support. The Green Producers’ Tool gets updates and includes user support. It also gives access to the Green Producers Club, which, for example, offers peer activities. The Green Producers’ Tool also includes a Green Suppliers list of responsible suppliers in Norway and Denmark – hopefully in the future also in Finland.

In Finland, the Vihreä Taide calculator is linked to the Sustainable Visual Arts Network, which provides a peer community for visual arts practitioners. There is more information about the Network on the Vihreä Taide website.

How are the different starting points reflected in the calculators?

The different starting points for the calculators are naturally reflected in their structure and content. Since IHME Helsinki only produces one artwork per year – often with very little material input – the Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator has served us well as a tool, even though it was not originally designed specifically for arts organisations.

However, from the perspective of an artwork or an exhibition, the Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator can soon feel inadequate, as it does not allow accurate calculation of the carbon footprint of the materials and purchases involved in artworks and exhibitions, or comparison of material choices in terms of emissions.

Scope of calculators in emissions calculations in the visual arts sector

The Vihreä Taide calculator is an excellent tool for comparing material choices. It can be used, for example, to compare the impact on a work’s carbon footprint of a change of material from plastic to wood.

The Green Producers’ Tool also has similar material data, but the options show that the calculator is not designed primarily for the visual arts. For example, the Vihreä Taide calculator has ten different metals to choose from, while the Green Producers’ Tool has three. On the other hand, the Green Producers’ Tool has a more comprehensive selection of different textile types (12) than the Vihreä Taide calculator (2). Overall, the Green Producers’ Tool is the most comprehensive in its emission source options.

Usability of the calculators

While the large number of emission source options is an advantage, it can also make it difficult to use the calculator when trying to identify the right emission source among several options. This issue has, however, been taken into account in the design of the Green Producers’ Tool: emission sources are grouped in a logical way, making it easy to find the right option. After a few attempts, users begin to get a feel for where each source is located.

This logical categorisation is also an advantage in the Vihreä Taide Calculator, where the different emission source options can be found intuitively. Since only the sources relevant to the visual arts have been selected, there are fewer menus to navigate. Conversely, the Vihreä Taide calculator sometimes offers too many options; for example, there are seven different ways to enter air travel, which can be confusing. This is where fewer options or the possibility of user support would be an advantage.

The Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator and Vihreä Taide calculator are simpler in their operating logic than the Green Producers Tool, which is more versatile for managing large-scale cultural productions. For example, the Green Producers Tool has ready-made models that divide emissions into the different stages of production: planning & development, production & installation, exhibition period, and de-installation. While this is useful for managing large-scale productions, it is not necessarily so useful for an individual artist or small organisation. However, the Green Producers´s Tool offers its users the possibility to customise their own interface to suit their own production size and accounting needs.

Differences in emission calculation results and emission factors

In the arts sector, alongside energy consumption by large art institutions, the main source of emissions is often travel by artists, staff and the public⁽ⁱ⁾. This is also true for IHME Helsinki’s art productions.

All the calculators allowed the calculation of travel emissions, but the results they produced differed. In 2024, travel emissions from IHME Helsinki activities according to the different calculators were:

• Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator: 12.3 t CO2e
• Vihreä Taide calculator: 8.3 t CO2e
• Green Producers’ Tool: 5.1 t CO2e

The differences in the results are mainly due to the emission factors used by the calculators. An emission factor is an estimate of how much greenhouse gas is released into the atmosphere from a given emission source – for example, making one cup of coffee, one night in a hotel, or a one-kilometre car journey.

Emission factors vary depending on the data and assumptions on which they are based and the factors taken into account in the calculation. Flights are a key source of emissions from IHME Helsinki’s activities and their emission factors are influenced by a number of assumptions. They include aircraft occupancy, equipment, the allocation of emissions between passengers and freight, and whether the effects on clouds at high altitudes are taken into account.

Thus, different calculation methods produce different emission factors, and different calculators using different emission factors give different results for the same journey. For example, the Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator gives the emissions for one person flying from Helsinki to Vienna (1460km) as 479 kg CO₂e, the Vihreä Taide calculator as 482 kg CO₂e* and the Green Producers’ Tool as 315 kg CO₂e.

The different emission factors changed the calculators’ results for emissions from accommodation more than from flights. While the Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator estimated that 38 nights of accommodation produced 2588 kg CO₂e, the Vihreä Taide calculator produced 1915 kg CO₂e, and the Green Producers’ Tool formula said 378 kg CO₂e**.

In addition to the emission factors, the calculation is, of course, affected by many of the calculator’s other characteristics, such as the accuracy of the emission-source definition.

Results

IHME Helsinki’s total emissions in 2024, according to different calculators, were:

• Hiilifiksu järjestö: 15.8 t CO₂e
• Vihreä Taide: 14.6 t CO₂e
• Green Producers’ Tool: 9.2 t CO₂e

The Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator and Vihreä Taide calculator gave fairly similar results for total emissions, which were the same order of magnitude as the average annual emissions of about one and a half Finns. The Green Producers’ Tool produced a lower result, corresponding to the annual emissions of one Finn. (ii)

So, it is important to remember that the calculators should be used, first and foremost, as an indicative tool. On the other hand, reliable monitoring of progress requires that the same calculator be used from year to year, or from production to production.

None of the calculators used in the comparison was unequivocally superior to the others, but the choice of the right calculator depends on the practical requirements. For the needs of an individual artist or small-scale exhibition production, the free Vihreä Taide calculator covers the most important elements, while the Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator is the most appropriate for calculating emissions for an organisation. To manage the carbon footprint of large-scale productions the Green Producers Club calculator is the most effective tool.

All the tools included in the comparison proved to be functional and adequate for calculating IHME Helsinki’s carbon footprint, but the Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator was still the most suitable for us. We will, however, continue to look at other calculators in the future, for example, to gain information on the impact of different material choices on our carbon footprint.

Pinja Valja
Working on her diploma work for Specialisation programme in climate expertise. Pinja is responsible for Eco-Coodinator’s tasks in IHME Helsinki during the spring 2025.

* Calculated using the Vihreä Taide Calculator using the “Radiation Exposure Factor 3” option, which gave the highest result.

** An average price per day was added to the accommodation data in the Hiilifiksu järjestö calculator. In the Green Producers’ Tool, all overnight stays were ranked as 5-star, which gave the highest figure for overnights (on a scale of 1 to 5 stars).

Sources:

(i) Julie’s Bicycle. 2021. The Art of Zero: An Indicative Carbon Footprint of Global Visual Arts and the Transition to Net Zero. ARTOFZEROv2.pdf

(ii) Sitra. 2023. Keskivertosuomalaisen hiilijalanjälki

Chat GPT has been used to help proofread the text. Edited by MG.