In Two Studies, Heating Water Is a Top Carbon Stage for White Tea

White tea is withered and dried. Two life-cycle studies have put figures on its carbon footprint. A 2024 assessment of tea grown in Tamil Nadu found the consumption stage, which is the drinker boiling water, contributing 45 to 56 percent of the total footprint across its teas, the largest of the six stages it counted. A 2026 assessment drawing partly on data from fifteen Fuding enterprises put consumption at 5.17 to 5.67 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of finished tea, against an average total of 16.94, or roughly a third of it.

The six stages, counted

The Tamil Nadu work is Insights of carbon footprint of tea through life cycle approach¹, by Premalatha and colleagues in Plant Science Today in 2024. It follows tea through six stages: cultivation, processing, packaging, transportation, consumption, and disposal. Each stage is charged with the emissions it causes, and the six are added.

The consumption stage came out on top. In the authors' own summary it "contributed the highest CO2 emissions, accounting for 45%-56% to overall CF." Black tea's consumption stage was the lower end of that, 45 percent, or 5.8 kilograms per kilogram of made tea. Green and white tea each came in at 8.3 kilograms. The paper's stage table gives white tea a whole-life total of 12.9 kilograms and no processing figure. It finds white tea's processing emissions negligible. That puts consumption at about 64 percent of white tea's footprint. The paper's text gives 56 percent for green and white tea together.

Totals across the whole life cycle came to 12.9 kilograms per kilogram of made tea for black and white tea alike, and 14.79 for green. That ratio reads the same in any consistent pair of units: 12.9 pounds for every pound of made tea.

Fifteen enterprises in Fuding

The second measurement is of Fuding white tea specifically. Quantifying the Carbon Footprint of Fuding White Tea Production², by Hao, He, Dai and colleagues in Agronomy, published online in February 2026, draws partly on complete life-cycle data from fifteen tea enterprises. Its average carbon emission intensity is 16.94 kilograms per kilogram of finished tea in the crude state, with a spread of 3.41 either side.

Three inputs account for most of that: electricity at 45 to 68 percent of total emissions, water use at 15 to 26 percent, and fertilizer at 7 to 22 percent.

The study names two hotspots rather than one. Processing runs 4.10 to 12.73 kilograms per kilogram, which the authors attribute mainly to energy-intensive drying and refining. Consumption runs 5.17 to 5.67, dominated by water heating. Across 216 modelled scenarios, production emissions ranged from 15.44 to 22.72 kilograms per kilogram.

Emissions could be reduced by up to 56 percent through integrated measures, the authors' examples being organic fertilization, natural withering, and short-chain distribution. And once tea-garden carbon sequestration is counted, at 1.17 to 8.45 kilograms per kilogram, Fuding white tea production could potentially reach net-negative emissions.

The two studies compared

Tamil Nadu puts consumption first among six stages. Fuding puts consumption at roughly a third of the total, standing alongside processing rather than clear of it.

In a white tea, the stage performed by the person doing the drinking is the largest of six in one study and one of the two named hotspots in the other.

How much water gets heated moves the number

A separate UK analysis shows how far that stage can swing on behaviour alone. The Carbon Footprint of a Cup of Tea³, published by Jack Pearce at Circular Ecology in February 2022, is about tea grown in China and drunk in the UK. Its base case, with no milk and no overfilled kettle, is 31.5 kilograms per kilogram of tea, of which packaging is 53 percent and consumption 13.

Change two consumer habits and the shares invert. With an overfilled kettle and milk, the same analysis reaches 46.4 kilograms per kilogram, packaging down to 34 percent and consumption up to 43. On the kettle by itself the analysis states: "if we assume we are using twice as much than needed (500 ml), the GWP (global warming potential) of tea increases by 76%." Five hundred millilitres is about a pint, boiled for a cup that needed half of it.