Perspective | April 22, 2026

What type of chocolate is best for climate?

by Emily Cassidy

Chocolate image superimposed on world map

Key Takeaways

Greenhouse gas emissions from the main ingredients of chocolate – cocoa beans, sugar, and milk powder – vary greatly based on where and how they are produced.
Cocoa beans have driven deforestation in several countries in recent years, contributing to their carbon emissions.
If done right, producing cocoa beans can be a climate solution.

When choosing a treat to satisfy your chocolate craving, you probably consider whether to go for the bittersweet bite of dark chocolate or the smooth mellowness of milk chocolate. What you might not think about is its climate impact.

Although chocolate is not the biggest driver of diet-related greenhouse gas emissions (spoiler: it’s beef), it can pack a surprisingly large carbon punch.

The average American consumes about 6 pounds (2.6 kilograms) of chocolate per year, but the crop used to make it is not grown on American soil.

Cacao trees — which produce cocoa beans — grow best within about 20° from the equator. Over half of all cocoa is grown in Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana, with the rest grown in other tropical countries, including Indonesia, Nigeria, and Ecuador, and Colombia.

The crop’s success in warm and wet places has led to substantial deforestation, which releases CO₂ into the atmosphere. Vast swaths of tropical forests have been cut down to make way for cacao, even into protected areas. A 2023 study found that cocoa cultivation drove more than 37% of forest loss in protected areas in Côte d’Ivoire and more than 13% in Ghana.

Cocoa is not the only ingredient in chocolate contributing to climate change, though. Varying amounts of greenhouse gas emissions are also associated with milk and sugar. This may lead us to wonder, which chocolate is best for climate?

“There are a lot of nuances about the climate impact of milk chocolate versus dark chocolate,” says Joseph Poore, Ph.D., a researcher focused on the sustainability of global agriculture at the University of Oxford.

In 2018, Poore and colleague Thomas Nemecek published an analysis of data from nearly 40,000 farms and 1,600 food processors and retailers to determine the greenhouse gas emissions, land, and water involved in the production of 40 major food products. Their findings show that meat and dairy have an outsized impact on the climate and environment – especially beef and lamb. With respect to chocolate, cocoa and milk were the most egregious ingredients.

The study found that, on average (globally), milk production results in 3.2 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO₂‑eq ) emissions per liter, with a range of about 2–5 kg CO₂‑eq. But the milk powder in chocolate is about 8 times the emissions intensity, by weight, of regular milk, bringing the per-kilogram emissions intensity up to about 25 kg CO₂‑eq. Even so, when we look at the total climate impact of chocolate production, on average, dark chocolate containing twice the amount of cocoa is 44% more emissions intensive than milk chocolate (Figure 1).

The climate impact of cocoa production, however, is even more variable than milk.

Globally, cocoa beans account for an average of 46 kilograms of CO₂‑eq emissions per kilogram – about half from deforestation. Poore notes that the distribution of emissions associated with this crop is hugely different depending on where it is sourced. “If cacao trees are planted on former cropland, cacao can even sequester carbon.”

Rather than cutting down trees to plant cacao, growers can plant the crop in the shaded understory of forests—a practice known as agroforestry. Planting cacao and other trees on degraded croplands can improve carbon sequestration while improving local incomes and food security. In Ecuador, for example, the Third Millenium Alliance is paying farmers to protect existing cloud forests and restore adjacent forests with native trees including cacao.

“There is a lot of complexity underlying these findings,” says Poore. “But they highlight the importance of ingredient sourcing and the need for commitments from companies and governments to eliminate deforestation from supply chains and to enable farmers to cut other drivers of environmental impacts such as excess fertilizer use.”

Poore and his colleagues at Oxford University recently led the release of HESTIA, an open-access web platform that allows users to explore data on the environmental and climate impacts of crops and food products. HESTIA doesn’t yet include data for all crops and food products, but this first version includes the distribution and average emissions of cocoa beans (Figure 2) and sugar, with links to the underlying source data.

“By putting data from thousands of farms into HESTIA, we created a freely accessible way to compare environmental outcomes,” Poore said, “Our work is helping farmers, food producers, and consumers make informed decisions on how to make our food system more sustainable.”

References

HESTIA. https://www.hestia.earth/

Mongabay, via Youtube (2024). Cacao is keeping this community in Ecuador away from deforestation. https://youtu.be/7nJ7v2iKYsk?si=tADQhoqOvecRFyeX

Poore, J., & Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science, 360(6392), 987–992. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216

World Resources Institute (2025). From degraded land to thriving farms: A regeneration Story in Ghana’s Cocoa Belt. https://www.wri.org/insights/restoring-land-ghana-cocoa-belt

Emily Cassidy is an environmental scientist and writer with expertise in agriculture, ecology, and land use. As a research associate at Project Drawdown, Emily evaluates the emissions mitigation potential of climate solutions in the food system.

This work was published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. You are welcome to republish it following the license terms.