# What is the carbon footprint of titanium dioxide pigment per tonne?

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/titanium-dioxide-pigment-carbon-footprint-per-tonne

Titanium dioxide is made from ilmenite or rutile by the sulphate or chloride route. Both use a lot of energy, and the chloride route also uses petroleum coke, which releases process CO2. For paint and plastics makers it is often a large share of their raw material footprint.

## Main sources

- Petroleum coke in chlorination (chloride route).
- Acid digestion and calcination (sulphate route).
- Steam, fuel and electricity throughout.

## For paint makers

Ask the pigment supplier for a figure per tonne and the route used. It often matters more than your own factory's power.

## What Senseible does here

Senseible reads the energy invoices behind the making stage into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, and keeps material invoices on the Scope 3 trail. Material factors come from your supplier or a named database and are labelled with their source, so the product figure can be traced line by line.

- [Paint per litre](https://senseible.earth/answers/paint-carbon-footprint-per-litre)
- [Dye and pigment per kg](https://senseible.earth/answers/dye-pigment-carbon-footprint-per-kg)

Sources: [GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard](https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-value-chain-scope-3-standard), [IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories](https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/2006gl/)

Last reviewed 2026-10-22.