# How do I calculate the carbon footprint of cakes per kg?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/cake-carbon-footprint-per-kg

Weigh each ingredient per kg of cake, such as flour, sugar, eggs, oil, butter and cocoa, and use supplier or published figures. Add oven fuel or electricity, mixing, chilling and packing, then divide the bakery's energy by kg of cake passed.

## Ingredients

- Flour, sugar and oil or butter by weight.
- Eggs, milk and cream, often the largest per-kg ingredients.
- Cocoa, flavours and decoration.

## Baking and packing

- Ovens on PNG, LPG, diesel or electricity.
- Mixers, depositors and coolers.
- Cold storage, trays, boxes and wrappers.

## Per kg

Report per kg by recipe; cream and butter-rich cakes differ clearly from plain sponges.

## Worked example: cake bakery per kg (one month)

- Electricity: 20,000 kWh x 0.710 = 14,200 kg CO2
- LPG: 3,000 kg x 2.98 = 8,940 kg CO2
- Kg of cake passed: 40,000
- Plant total: 23,140 / 40,000 = 0.579 kg CO2 per kg
- Add ingredients and packaging for the full figure

Inputs are illustrative; use your own bills and production records.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible reads the plant's electricity bills (CEA grid factor 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh, CO2 Baseline Database version 21.0) and fuel invoices (IPCC 2006 defaults) into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, the plant-level input to a per-unit figure. Bought-in materials go to the supplier evidence trail; product reports are self-declared drafts.

- [Product carbon footprint calculator](https://senseible.earth/calculators/product-carbon-footprint)
- [Bread footprint per kg](https://senseible.earth/answers/bread-carbon-footprint-per-kg)
- [Biscuit footprint per kg](https://senseible.earth/answers/biscuit-carbon-footprint-per-kg)
- [Food processing industry](https://senseible.earth/industries/food-processing)

Sources: [GHG Protocol Product Standard](https://ghgprotocol.org/standards), [ISO 14067:2018, Carbon footprint of products (iso.org)](https://www.iso.org), [IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel defaults)](https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/vol2.html), [CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 21.0](https://cea.nic.in/cdm-co2-baseline-database/?lang=en)

Last reviewed 2026-10-20.