Dark chocolate: carbon footprint per kg
Live factor value
19.1 kgCO2e per kg
Source: Agribalyse (ADEME/INRAE, France), 3.1 (revision 1). Factor set agribalyse-3.1-r1.
Dark chocolate carries one of the highest footprints of any plant-based food in Agribalyse — the live figure is below, and it sits above several animal products. Cocoa is the reason, and the database makes that unusually easy to see: the plant foods above a dark chocolate bar are cocoa powder, cocoa butter and other dark chocolate — the bar's own ingredients in undiluted form, and its own siblings. It is a tropical tree crop, frequently grown on land cleared of rainforest, and the carbon released when that forest goes is counted against every subsequent harvest.
Dilution is what separates the categories. Milk chocolate cuts cocoa with sugar and milk solids, both lower-carbon per kilogram than cocoa itself, and lands well below every dark bar. Within the dark range Agribalyse draws no line at all — its 70%-plus and sub-70% bars carry the identical figure — so the useful choice is dark versus milk, not one dark bar versus another.
Worked example
A 100 g bar of dark chocolate: 0.1 × 19.1 = 1.9 kgCO2e.
Measure your own with the free food calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- Why is dark chocolate higher-carbon than milk chocolate?
- It contains more cocoa, and cocoa is the high-carbon ingredient. Sugar and milk solids dilute it in milk chocolate, bringing the per-kilogram figure down by roughly a third in this database.
- Does deforestation-free cocoa have a lower footprint?
- Cocoa grown without land conversion avoids the largest single term in this figure. Agribalyse publishes a single average rather than splitting by sourcing, so we cannot show that number without leaving the source.