Elon Musk's private jet: Here's how much CO2 it released in 2022

Musk made 134 trips in his jet.
Ameya Paleja
Elon Musk at 2022 Met Gala.
Elon Musk at 2022 Met Gala.

Getty Images 

The private jet of Elon Musk, the world's second richest person, flew a total of 134 times in 2022, the Twitter account that tracks his jet said in a tweet. It can be presumed that Musk was on the jet more often than not, except in the case of a flight that lasted just six minutes.

Musk has championed himself as the guy who cares for the planet and goes to great lengths to make electric vehicles (EVs) a possibility. As a matter of fact, he has also sparred with Bill Gates, claiming the same. However, when it comes to his own travel, Musk is happy to hop onto his private plane and travel halfway across the planet just to catch a game of soccer, as happened with the recently concluded FIFA World Cup.

A consolidated tweet of his travel in 2022 shows that Musk traveled to eight countries on his private jet in a year when the common folk was troubled by waves of COVID-19 early on and tech layoffs toward the end.

Carbon emissions from Musk's jet

To bring a bit more perspective, the Twitter account also provided more details on what the flights mean in terms of fuel used and carbon emissions. Based on an estimation that a Gulfstream G650ER burns 503 gallons of fuel for every hour of flight, the account predicts that 178,686 gallons or 709,578 liters of fuel was used, and this resulted in 1,895 tons of CO2 emissions.

This is equivalent to emissions when building 225 homes or those emitted by 375 cars in a year. When compared to the more environment-conscious homeowners in Europe, Musk's travels exceeded the annual emissions from over 170 households, which includes the heating and power needs during the cold winters.

Musk's longest flight lasted over 12 hours as he traveled from Greece to Austin, Texas. While the shortest lasted just six minutes, it likely did not have Musk onboard as the aircraft took off and landed back at Long Beach Airport.

Apart from that, Musk's travels were largely between California and Texas, the two places his businesses are now based after he recently acquired the social media platform Twitter.

How is this on Twitter?

In case you are wondering how this information is available on Twitter, it is in compliance with the social media website's new rules that an individual's live location cannot be shared. A snapshot of a year's travel does not reveal the location of the person at this very moment.

Elon Musk, who had a problem with his jet being tracked for a long time, took matters into his own hands when he assumed the role of CEO at Twitter and had the account @Elonjet suspended for revealing his location, which allegedly put his two-year-old son in danger.

While the account remains suspended to date, Jack Sweeney, the owner, made a comeback on the platform with a new account that posts the whereabouts of the jet, but 24 hours later.

A recent post from the account, however, may have Musk fuming again. Based on the private jet data, Musk hasn't been to Brownsville airport in over three months, just before the Twitter takeover. After this date, the plane has been more frequently to San Francisco, a location it rarely went to before.

If investors and the general public wondered that the Twitter takeover was hurting Tesla thus far, Musk's other venture SpaceX isn't getting any attention either. Or that's what one can gauge from private jet data.

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