From Measurement to Monitoring: Evaluating Privacy Risks in Carbon Footprint Tools

The increasing urgency of climate change mitigation has accelerated the adoption of tools to measure and monitor greenhouse gas emissions at individual, organizational, and infrastructural levels. While these tools enhance the accuracy and accountability of emissions measurement, they also raise privacy concerns due to the sensitive data they collect, the granularity of monitoring, and the potential for secondary use. Despite their growing adoption, no prior study has systematically evaluated the privacy implications of carbon footprint tools across categories or examined how data practices differ between consumer calculators, enterprise systems, and emerging Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and blockchain solutions. This study addresses this gap by conducting a structured, cross-category privacy evaluation of carbon footprint tools, reviewing 46 tools from academic and industry sources. A novel five-dimensional privacy risk framework, encompassing data type, granularity, storage, processing, secondary use, and user agency, is developed and applied across five tool categories: individual calculators, corporate platforms, infrastructure tools, IoT/AI/blockchain systems, and research tools. The findings reveal pronounced privacy–accuracy trade-offs: tools offering higher measurement precision often require more intrusive data collection. The study also identifies category-specific least- and highest-risk tools, showing that simple household calculators present low risk. In contrast, enterprise platforms and IoT/blockchain systems exhibit the highest exposure due to sensitive operational, financial, and real-time data flows. The study is limited by its reliance on literature and public documentation, suggesting the need for empirical field studies and technical audits. Future research should expand on these findings by investigating user perceptions, legal frameworks, and privacy-preserving design strategies for sustainable digital tools.