Tuna: carbon footprint per kg
Live factor value
4.98 kgCO2e per kg
Source: Agribalyse (ADEME/INRAE, France), 3.1 (revision 1). Factor set agribalyse-3.1-r1.
Tuna's footprint is almost entirely fuel — the live figure is below. Nothing is farmed, fed or fertilised: the emissions come from boats travelling far offshore and burning diesel to find and land a fish that ranges across whole oceans. It is a supply chain with no agriculture in it at all.
That makes it behave unlike anything else on this page. Farmed foods get more efficient as feed and land use improve; a wild fishery gets less efficient as stocks thin, because the same catch takes more searching. The number moves with the state of the fishery, not with the state of the technology.
Worked example
Two 200 g tuna steaks: 0.4 × 4.98 = 2 kgCO2e.
Measure your own with the free food calculator.
Frequently asked questions
- Is canned tuna higher-carbon than fresh?
- Agribalyse lists canned entries above the raw figure — the can, the oil or brine, and the processing all add to it, though canned tuna keeps without refrigeration.
- Is wild fish lower-carbon than farmed?
- It depends entirely on the fishery and the farm. Wild capture avoids feed production but burns fuel; some fisheries land far below farmed equivalents and some far above.