CONCITO

Retail-gate carbon footprints in kg CO2e per kg for 540 foods in five markets (Denmark, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Spain), split into six life-cycle stages, from the Big Climate Database of CONCITO, the Danish green think tank.

Non-profit
  • Food
SpecialistOpen licence
Factors
16,898
Values
16,898

One per year and method

Countries
5

5 regions, sub-national included

Edition
1.2

published 18 Dec 2025 · all versions

Last loaded
16 Oct 2026

Report a newer version

Overview

The Big Climate Database is published by CONCITO, an independent Danish climate think tank, and modelled by 2.-0 LCA consultants. It gives the climate footprint of the foods sold in Danish, British, Dutch, French and Spanish shops. The method is set out in the methodology report for version 1.2 (September 2024).

We load the workbook of version 1.2, re-issued on 18 December 2025: one sheet per market, one row per food. The website builds each food from a larger set of intermediate datasets (crops, ingredients, packaging, retail) that has no bulk download; only the 540 foods of the workbook are loaded.

At a glance

Publisher
CONCITO
Kind
Non-profit
Scope
SpecialistOne category holds at least 5% of its factors: Food and agriculture, with 100.0%. A generalist needs 4.
Home region
Denmark
Edition
1.2
Licence
Open licence (cc-by-4.0)

What open-climate.ai standardised

over the publisher's own fileHow we standardise

One category axis

16,898 of 16,898 factor values mapped to one category

16,898 keep the publisher's own classification too

Warming potentials

None is converted: every value keeps the publisher's GWP.

16,898 factor values left on the publisher's GWP

6 more things standardised

Parts and parents

14,484 factor values grouped under 2,414 parents

Use a part on its own, or the parent when you want the whole.

Languages

English: 100.0% of factor values

Danish: 97.3% of factor values

German: 100.0% of factor values

French: 100.0% of factor values

Audit checks

133 passed3 enforced when loadedlast run 22 Oct 2026

Checks we run on every load to keep the data above trustworthy. Counts are for this library; the grey figure is the same check across all libraries. Point at the i to see why a check matters.

What the statuses meanHow checks are countedWhy we checkHow checks are grouped

One category axis

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  • Every source category maps to our vocabulary

    Enforced when loaded

  • The publisher's classification is kept

    Passed

  • Every classification level has a valid parent

    Passed

  • Every product code comes with the codes above it

    Passed

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    Passed

  • A standard classification code has one label in every library

    Passed

Coded regions

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  • Every region is a known code

    Enforced when loaded

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed · 2 in all libraries

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    Passed

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    Passed · 348 in all libraries

Warming potentials

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  • Methane and nitrous oxide figures match the stated GWP

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    Passed · 180,272 in all libraries

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Parts and parents

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Data quality

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Languages

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  • Every factor has an English name

    Passed

  • Translations match the current source text

    Passed

  • Translations follow a corrected source text

    Passed

  • Recorded translations survive a reload

    Passed

  • Every served factor has a name

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    Passed · 24 in all libraries

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  • Every usage note is available for display and translation

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Traceable to the source

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  • Values traced to one source row agree with each other

    Passed

  • No duplicate factors are served

    Passed

  • No factor value claims two things that cannot both be true

    Passed

  • No energy factor answers a question about packaging or recycling

    Passed · 169 in all libraries

  • No factor value the publisher has withdrawn is still served

    Passed · 14,762 in all libraries

Other checks

  • One activity keeps one family across its units

    Passed · 8 in all libraries

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    Passed · 12 in all libraries

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed · 25 in all libraries

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  • Per-gas values are in CO2e

    Passed

  • Every tagged gas has a known GWP

    Passed

  • Every fixed group of regions lists what it covers

    Passed

  • Where both exist, the residual mix is shown before the green-tariff zero

    Passed

  • Every green-electricity zero is a market-based value

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    Passed

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    Passed · 2 in all libraries

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    Passed

  • Every green-electricity zero is exactly zero and says why

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    Passed

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    Passed

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    Passed

  • One default value per factor and year

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    Passed · 4 in all libraries

  • Every value has a number, a GWP version and a reference year

    Passed

  • Only a library cleared for it lists factors without their number

    Passed

  • Product footprints headline fossil carbon, like EPDs

    Passed

  • No factor description is too long to display in full

    Passed · 5 in all libraries

  • The library-wide answers on what a factor covers are up to date

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    Passed · 3 in all libraries

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    Passed

  • Every publisher's quality rating system is read

    Passed

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    Passed · 4,552 in all libraries

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    Passed · 2 in all libraries

  • Single-gas values have their AR6 version

    Passed · 8 in all libraries

  • No factor answers a question that does not arise for it

    Passed · 11 in all libraries

  • A supplier named in the source is linked to the factor

    Passed

  • A part covering the same scope as its total is linked to it

    Passed

  • Every device total that includes its use also gives the manufacturing share (embodied emissions)

    Passed · 112 in all libraries

  • No plug-in vehicle supply-chain estimate is rated above what its method allows

    Passed

  • A year in a factor's name matches its reference year

    Passed

How the audit works

What can I do with this data?

Open licence · credit the publisher

Your rights

Open licence · cc-by-4.0
Use it to calculate my own footprint
Yes
Publish my footprint results
Yes, if
  • you credit the publisher
  • you say what you changed
Share the file with my customers
Yes, if
  • you credit the publisher
  • you say what you changed
Put the factors in a product I sell
Yes, if
  • you credit the publisher
  • you say what you changed
Modify it or combine it with my own data
Yes, if
  • you credit the publisher
  • you say what you changed

Named licence, checked on 2 Aug 2026

CC BY 4.0 §2(a)(1) grants the right to reproduce and Share the Licensed Material and to produce and Share Adapted Material, for any purpose, commercial included; §3(a) requires attribution and an indication of changes.

Credit line

The Big Climate Database v1.2, CONCITO / 2.-0 LCA consultants, CC BY 4.0. Normalised by open-climate.ai, https://open-climate.ai/factors/libraries/concito/ (CC BY 4.0)

Not legal advice: the publisher's terms prevail.

Full termsWhere this answer comes from

How to read these answers

Coverage

What the library covers, by category and by boundary. Click a slice to drill in, then a sub-category or a boundary to filter the factors below.

By category

Food and agriculture: 2,414
2,414factors

Click a slice to see what is under it. A name opens its category page; its swatch hides it from the ring.

By boundary

Cradle to shelf: 2,414
2,414factors

Click a slice to see what is under it. Click a name to hide it from the ring.

Browse factors

top 0 matches

SavedUnfoldFactorRegionBoundary
Unit
VersionPublishedLoadedStatusSource
1.218 Dec 202516 Oct 2026ServedSource

Methodology

How this works
  • A footprint is per kg of food as sold at retail, in net weight: not per kg of edible portion and not per kg of dry matter. It runs from the farm to the shop shelf. Transport home, storage and cooking at home, dishwashing and the treatment of household food waste are not counted.
  • The model is consequential: it estimates what one more kilogram of demand causes, through the marginal suppliers, the marginal electricity mixes, the by-products that a process displaces and the land use change that the demand for land drives elsewhere. Most other food libraries are attributional, sharing the emissions of today's average supply. The two approaches answer different questions, and their footprints do not add up.
  • Each total is split into six published stages: agriculture, indirect land use change, food processing, packaging, transport and retail. The stages add up to the total. Packaging includes the end-of-life treatment of the packaging materials and, where that treatment recovers energy or materials, the production it displaces.
  • A stage can be negative: food processing where a by-product displaces other production, indirect land use change where the demand frees land, packaging where recycling displaces virgin material. No total is negative.
  • The global warming potentials follow the IPCC 2013 report (the Fifth Assessment Report) over 100 years, with methane corrected to 30.5 for fossil and 27.75 for biogenic methane. Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are counted. The workbook prints one total per stage and no gas breakdown, so the values are not restated with other potentials.
  • Biogenic carbon dioxide is not counted, except where it comes from land use change: the indirect land use change stage counts the temporary loss of carbon storage, and it is part of the total.
  • The background data is the hybrid EXIOBASE 3.3 input-output database, with crop, animal and trade data for 2018, an economic background for 2011 and an indirect land use change model built on FAOSTAT data for 2011 to 2016. Two parameters inside some aggregated stage figures come from ecoinvent 3.4; no ecoinvent data is loaded or shown.
  • The workbook prints no data year. We give every value the year 2024, the year version 1.2 and its methodology report were published.
  • CONCITO states that the uncertainty could not be quantified in this version.

Edition year: 2024, the year CONCITO published version 1.2 of the Big Climate Database and its methodology report (the workbook was re-issued in December 2025). No data year is printed: crop, animal and trade data are for 2018, the EXIOBASE background for 2011.

What we import

  • 16,898 factors from version 1.2: 2,414 retail-gate totals and 14,484 stage slices beneath them, six per total. On every total the six stages add up to the total.
  • The totals by market: Denmark 505, the United Kingdom 469, the Netherlands 476, France 481 and Spain 483. Every factor is per kg and is an average for its market.
  • Every factor is marked with the release's system model, consequential, so it is never read as an attributional footprint.
  • On each total, the indirect land use change stage is also served as the land use change part of the total.
  • 353 stage figures smaller than a billionth (residues of the matrix calculation, not data) are loaded as exactly zero, with the printed figure kept.
  • Each factor carries the English name of the workbook and one of CONCITO's 13 food categories. Descriptions and usage notes are written by open-climate.ai.
  • Not imported: 269 market rows where CONCITO did not model the food for that market, and 17 rows whose total is zero. Both are kept in our source records.
  • Kept with each value but not served as separate fields: the Danish name and category, the energy, protein, fat and carbohydrate content, the identifiers of the website's intermediate datasets, and CONCITO's notes on changes from version 1.1.
  • Not imported: the comparison sheet, which repeats version 1.2 beside the previous version 1.1, and the intermediate datasets of the website.

Open, under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence, which the website names on every page. You may copy, adapt and redistribute the values, including commercially, as long as you credit the source. CONCITO gives no attribution wording; we use "The Big Climate Database v1.2, CONCITO / 2.-0 LCA consultants, CC BY 4.0". Last verified 2026-10-15.

What can I do with this data?

Credit line: The Big Climate Database v1.2, CONCITO / 2.-0 LCA consultants, CC BY 4.0

cc-by-4.0

Limitations

  • These are consequential footprints. Do not add them to, or average them with, attributional footprints from another library: where the Big Climate Database and Agribalyse both cover a French food, the two values agree within a factor of two only about three times in four.
  • A footprint is per kg as sold, including inedible parts and water. CONCITO warns against comparing foods per kg alone, because a kilogram of one food does not deliver what a kilogram of another does.
  • A stage slice is a part of a total, never a footprint in itself: a food processing slice can be negative, and so can an indirect land use change slice.
  • No uncertainty is published, and every factor is rated medium quality. How quality tiers are set.
  • The data years (2011 for the economic background, 2018 for crops and trade) are older than the edition year the values carry.
  • Some numbers on the website differ from the workbook; we load the workbook.
  • One edition is loaded. CONCITO re-issues the workbook within a version without changing its number.

Changelog

  • 2026-10-16: version 1.2 loaded, 16,898 factors: 2,414 retail-gate totals in five markets and their six stages.

Highlighted factor pages

A selection of CONCITO factors, with each value, boundary, source and derivation.

Food and agricultureProcessed food

Food and agriculturePlant products

Food and agricultureAnimal products

Food and agricultureBeverages

Know a newer edition?

If CONCITO has published an edition we do not serve yet, tell us where to find it.