The biggest climate decision at your next cookout is not the grill you buy. It is what you put on the grates. A backyard charcoal barbecue for four people can release as much greenhouse gas as an 80-mile car drive; and most of that comes from the meat, not the fuel, according to researchers at the University of Sheffield’s Institute for Sustainable Food.

Grilling season is back, and a new grill is a chance to cut the emissions from summer entertaining. But the fuels are only part of the story, and the rankings have shifted since this guide first ran. The U.S. power grid has gotten markedly cleaner, which changes the case for electric grills. Before you head to the store, it helps to understand the carbon impact of charcoal, wood pellets, propane, natural gas, electricity, and solar — and where each one actually lands. And if you’re replacing an old grill, don’t forget to recycle the one you’re retiring.

Start With What’s on the Grates

Cook from scratch and you’re already ahead. Preparing a meal from whole ingredients rather than processed food can lower its global warming and human toxicity potential by up to 35%, according to a study in the Journal of Cleaner Production. That doesn’t make a barbecue carbon-free, though — and the single largest lever you control is protein.

The Sheffield team compared three grilled meals and found the gap is dramatic. A beef-heavy cookout was the most carbon-intensive option they measured, while swapping beef burgers for chicken cut the barbecue’s emissions by roughly a third, and a fully plant-based spread cut them by more than half. The lifecycle impact of the food, especially red meat, typically dwarfs the footprint of the fuel used to cook it. A burger’s beef carries far more embodied carbon than the propane needed to char it.

Put plainly: grilling more vegetables, chicken, or plant-based options is the highest-impact change most people can make at a cookout. The fuel decisions below matter — they’re just the second-biggest lever, not the first.

The Burning Truth About Fuels

Grilling is a science, as any grill master knows. A meal for four takes roughly 30 minutes to an hour on the grates, and different fuels need different lengths of time to reach cooking temperature. The estimates below assume about one hour of cooking to make dinner for four — your actual results will vary with the grill and fuel you use.

Charcoal: The Most Polluting Choice

Dinner for four needs about 300 square inches of grill space for meat, vegetables, and warming buns. Charcoal runs about 30 briquettes per 100 square inches, so you’ll need roughly 90 pieces. At an average briquette weight of about 0.8 ounces, that’s about 4.7 pounds of charcoal for the meal.

Charcoal carries two carbon costs: the embodied carbon of making the briquettes and the emissions from burning them. Manufacturing is the hidden problem. Charcoal is produced by heating wood in a low-oxygen kiln until moisture and volatile compounds cook off, leaving nearly pure carbon, and only about 20% to 35% of the original wood’s energy survives the process. The rest burns off during production. Estimates put the manufacturing footprint at roughly 3.5 to 7 pounds of CO2 per pound of charcoal, before you ever light the grill.

Burning the 90 briquettes for an hour adds about 21 pounds of CO2, plus roughly 0.79 pounds of carbon monoxide and 1.6 pounds of particulate matter. All told, a single charcoal cookout for four exceeds 28 pounds of CO2 along with other pollutants and is by far the most polluting way to grill. Eric Johnson’s lifecycle comparison in Environmental Impact Assessment Review reached a similar verdict: charcoal’s carbon footprint is roughly three times that of liquefied petroleum gas.

There’s a footprint upstream of your patio, too. Worldwide, woodfuel harvest, which includes wood used to make charcoal, accounts for about 30% of the estimated 2.1 billion tons of CO2 released annually by forest degradation across developing countries, according to research published in Carbon Balance and Management. In parts of Africa, charcoal production now rivals outright deforestation as a driver of forest loss. The wood in a U.S. bag of briquettes may be sourced differently, but the global picture is a reminder that “natural” charcoal is not the same as low-impact.

Wood Pellets: Second Place, by a Wide Margin

Wood pellets are a popular charcoal alternative, and some grillers treat them as a low-carbon, renewable fuel. Cooking on a 300-square-inch grill takes about two pounds of pellets.

Embodied carbon varies widely with the wood used, the manufacturing process, and how far the pellets travel. In general, a pound of pellets carries about 0.09 pounds of embodied carbon and produces about 1.8 pounds of CO2 when burned — putting our four-person dinner at roughly 3.78 pounds total. Because pellets burn cleaner than charcoal, the meal generates only a few grams of carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and nitrogen and sulfur compounds. Pellets are the second-worst option on this list, but at a fraction of charcoal’s impact.

The Lower Footprint of Cooking With Gas

Propane and natural gas grills carry a lower environmental impact than charcoal and pellets, mostly because they heat fast and switch off the moment you’re done. That control over cooking time makes a real difference — charcoal keeps throwing off heat and emissions long before the grates are ready and well after the food comes off. Gas also keeps far more of its energy: propane retains roughly 90% of its energy from wellhead to grill, against charcoal’s 20% to 35%.

A propane grill uses about a half pound of propane for the 30 minutes our four-person meal needs. Including the embodied carbon of producing and delivering the fuel, that session totals about 1.99 pounds of CO2.

Natural gas usually requires a gas line plumbed to the home, so propane is more convenient for many grillers. A 30-minute cook uses roughly 1.2 pounds of natural gas, for a footprint of about 1.73 pounds of CO2. One caveat worth naming: natural gas systems can leak methane, a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO2 over the short term, which the combustion math above doesn’t capture.

Electric Grilling Has Quietly Become a Top Choice

For years the conventional wisdom held that electric grills were the dirtiest option, citing a 2003 Oak Ridge National Laboratory analysis from an era when coal dominated the power grid. That conclusion no longer holds, because the grid underneath it has changed.

In 2023, generating a kilowatt-hour of U.S. electricity produced about 0.81 pounds of CO2 on average, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration — down sharply from the coal-heavy mix of two decades ago, and still falling. The EPA’s emissions database shows grid carbon intensity dropping again by an average of about 3% from 2023 to 2024 as wind, solar, and natural gas displace coal.

Run the math on a modern electric grill, which draws roughly 1.5 to 1.8 kilowatts, and an hour of cooking on the average U.S. grid now produces somewhere in the neighborhood of 1.2 to 1.5 pounds of CO2. That puts it below propane on the typical grid — and well below charcoal — with one feature no fuel-burning grill offers: it gets cleaner every year on its own, as the grid decarbonizes, the same logic that drives heat pumps and electric vehicles. If your power comes from a cleaner-than-average source — rooftop solar, a green-power plan, or a state rich in hydro, wind, or nuclear — the number drops further still. Pair an electric grill with a solar generator and you approach a genuinely zero-carbon cookout.

The honest tradeoff is flavor and feel. Electric grills heat with coils or elements rather than open flame, so they don’t impart the same smoke, and purists notice. Cast-iron grates can deliver sear marks, and add-on smoking accessories help, but this is the option where the cooking experience differs most from a traditional grill.

Solar Cooking: Zero Fuel, Real Limits

Solar ovens use reflectors to concentrate sunlight on a sealed cooking chamber, making a meal with no fuel and no direct emissions. They excel at slow, moist, flavorful cooking — think baking and braising more than searing.

The limits are practical. It takes a genuinely sunny day to reach broiling or grilling temperatures, output drops with the light, and solar cookers don’t produce the signature grill lines many cooks prize. As a complement to another method — or for the right dish on the right afternoon — solar is unbeatable on carbon. As an everyday grill replacement for most households, it’s a harder sell than a clean-grid electric model.

The Carbon Impact of Grilling

A season of cooking 45 meals using each of the options we’ve reviewed will produce the following emissions:

• Charcoal: 1,260 lbs. of CO2, plus other pollutants
• Wood Pellets: 170 lbs. of CO2, plus some other pollutants
• Propane: 90 lbs. of CO2
• Natural Gas: 78 lbs. of CO2
• Solar: No CO2

Stretch these single-meal figures across a season of 45 cookouts and the differing environmental become starkly evident. The table below assumes the same four-person meal each time, cooked on the average U.S. grid for the electric estimate.

What You Can Do

If you’re buying a new grill

• Consider electric first. On today’s grid it beats propane, and it keeps improving as power generation cleans up, with no equipment swap required.
• If you want flame, choose gas over charcoal. Propane and natural gas heat fast and shut off instantly, cutting both fuel use and emissions.
• Recycle the grill you’re replacing rather than sending it to landfill. Check Earth911’s recycling locator for locations near you that accept grills, metal, or appliances.

If you’re keeping the grill you have

• Cook with the lid down to trap heat and burn less fuel per meal.
• Preheat for about 10 minutes instead of 20, and turn a gas grill off the moment the food is done.
• If you grill on charcoal, skip lighter fluid and use a chimney starter — a metal cylinder lit with a sheet of newspaper, usually under $20. Choose lump charcoal over briquettes, ideally from a brand that names its wood source, and light only as much as you need.

The change that beats all of the above

• Grill more vegetables, chicken, and plant-based options. Shifting even a few beef meals to chicken or veggies each season cuts more emissions than switching fuels does. The food is the bigger lever.
• Cook from scratch with whole ingredients to trim the lifecycle footprint of the meal itself.

The grilling choices you make this summer carry a long-term climate cost, or savings. Pick the cleaner fuel where you can, rethink what goes on the grates, and the backyard barbecue stays exactly as good while asking a lot less of the planet.

Related Reading

• Recycling Mystery: Barbecue Grills
• Solar Ovens Cook Food Almost Anywhere
• What Is Embodied Carbon?
• Recycling Mystery: Propane Tanks

Editor’s Note: Originally published on May 31, 2023, this article was substantially updated in June 2026.

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