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Google launched a new search feature on Wednesday that allows travelers to "go green" by helping them find flights with lower carbon emissions, the Associated Press reported.
Using the the new emissions tool, users can prioritize their flight search by emissions, similar to how people base flight choices on price or desired layovers. Flights with below-median emissions are highlighted in green, so users can quickly identify the option.
A basic search for flights provides an estimate of how many kilograms of carbon dioxide the flight will spew from departure to arrival.
Some flights might not have estimates because of a lack of data on certain aircraft or other missing information, Google said.
The estimates are pulled from data from the European Environmental Agency and flight-specific information from airlines and other providers. The data might give an aircraft's age, model and configuration, the speed and altitude it flies, and the distance between the flight's origin and destination.
The company added that the estimates don't yet take into account what direction the plane is heading—a potentially significant factor if flying into or with the jet stream, or whether or not the flight is using biofuels or other alternatives.
According to the tool, the least-polluting flights from the Washington, D.C., area to Chicago are all by United using Boeing 737s, which at 128 kilograms of carbon dioxide falls 21 percent below the median.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
Multiple stops can often result in an increase in emissions, but it's not always the case. Non-stop flights aren't always less polluting, particularly on longer routes. Google says that a more fuel-efficient plane can emit less on a multiple-stop journey than an older plane on a non-stop route
Airplanes account for a small portion of emissions that cause climate change—about 2 percent to 3 percent—but their share has been growing rapidly and is expected to roughly triple by mid-century with the global growth in travel.
The airline trade group Airlines for America says U.S. carriers have more than doubled the fuel efficiency of their fleets since 1978 and plan further reductions in carbon emissions. But the independent International Council on Clean Transportation says passenger traffic is growing nearly four times faster than fuel efficiency, leading to a 33 percent increase in emissions between 2013 and 2019.
The new emissions tool follows Google's introduction last month of a way for people to find "eco-certified" hotels. Also on Wednesday, Google introduced technology that allows drivers to find more fuel-efficient routes on Google Maps and from Google's Nest thermostat, upgrades that will help people find energy from the power grid during times of day when its sources are cleaner, such as from wind and solar.
The new features are part of a sustainability initiative Google CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted Wednesday.
"Climate change is no longer a distant threat—it's increasingly local and personal," Pichai wrote in a blog post. "We need urgent and meaningful solutions to address this pressing challenge," he added, saying the company has committed to run its data centers and campuses on carbon-free energy by 2030.
Google, owned by Alphabet Inc., is based in Mountain View, California.
