"The carbon footprint (or greenhouse gas footprint) serves as an indicator to compare the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted from an activity, product, company, or country."
The amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases emitted by a person, organization, or product.
Greenhouse Gases: The different types of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, and how they contribute to global warming.
Carbon Cycle: A process in which carbon moves between the atmosphere, oceans, and land. Understanding this process can help us reduce our carbon footprint.
Climate Change: An overview of how climate is changing due to Global Warming, the causes, and potential consequences.
Renewable Energy: Alternative sources of energy, such as wind, solar, and hydro power, and their role in reducing carbon emissions.
Energy Efficiency: Strategies and technologies for reducing energy consumption in buildings, transportation, and industry.
Carbon offset: Compensatory measures that are taken to neutralize carbon emissions, such as reforestation or investment in renewable energy projects.
Environmental Policy: The governmental and legal framework for addressing climate change through laws, regulations, and international agreements.
Sustainable Development: Strategies for achieving economic development that does not harm the environment and the well-being of future generations.
Circular Economy: An economic model in which resources are used efficiently and waste is minimized, reducing the need for new resource extraction and emissions.
Climate Modeling: Predictive models that use complex algorithms and data to predict the future climate and its impacts.
Climate Adaptation: Strategies for coping with the potential impacts of climate change, such as building seawalls or relocating people from coastal areas.
Carbon footprint calculators: Tools that help individuals and organizations measure their carbon footprint by estimating carbon emissions from activities such as travel, energy use, and food consumption.
Personal carbon footprint: This refers to the amount of greenhouse gases, mostly carbon dioxide, produced by an individual through daily activities such as transportation, energy consumption, food choices, etc.
Corporate carbon footprint: This refers to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by a company through its operations, supply chain, transportation, and products.
Product carbon footprint: This measures the carbon emissions associated with the entire life cycle of a product, including production, transportation, use, and disposal.
Building carbon footprint: This measures the greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, including construction materials, heating and cooling systems, lighting, water use, and waste disposal.
National carbon footprint: This refers to the total amount of greenhouse gases emitted by a country, including those produced through transportation, energy generation, agriculture, industry, and buildings.
Sectoral carbon footprint: This measures the carbon emissions of different sectors, such as agriculture, transportation, energy, and industry.
Supply chain carbon footprint: This refers to the greenhouse gas emissions produced by all the suppliers and vendors involved in a company's products and services.
Event carbon footprint: This measures the carbon emissions associated with a specific event, such as a concert, sports game, or conference.
Carbon offsetting: This involves investing in projects that reduce or remove greenhouse gas emissions, such as renewable energy development, forest conservation or reforestation, and energy efficiency programs.
Carbon cap and trade: This is a market-based approach used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, where companies can trade permits to emit carbon dioxide, encouraging those who can reduce emissions more cheaply to do so.
Embodied carbon: This refers to the carbon emissions emitted during the production and transportation of materials used in buildings or products.
Scope 1 emissions: This refers to emissions that directly result from an organization's operations, such as those produced by a factory or a company's vehicle fleet.
Scope 2 emissions: This refers to emissions indirectly resulting from an organization's operations, such as those produced by electricity generation for a company's buildings or operations.
Scope 3 emissions: This refers to emissions produced in the upstream and downstream value chains of an organization, such as emissions from the extraction of raw materials or the disposal of products.
Net zero emissions: This refers to the point at which a company or organization emits no more greenhouse gases than it removes from the atmosphere, for instance through carbon offsetting or carbon capture technologies.
"Carbon footprints are usually reported in tons of emissions (CO2-equivalent) per unit of comparison; such as per year, person, kg protein, km traveled and alike."
"For a product, its carbon footprint includes the emissions for the entire life cycle from the production along the supply chain to its final consumption and disposal."
"Similarly for an organization, its carbon footprint includes the direct as well as the indirect emissions caused by the organization (called Scope 1, 2 and 3 in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol that is used for carbon accounting of organizations)."
"For example, the carbon footprint of a product could help consumers decide which product to buy if they want to be climate aware."
"In the context of climate change mitigation activities, the carbon footprint can help distinguish those economic activities with a high footprint from those with a low footprint."
"The carbon footprint concept allows everyone to make comparisons between the climate-relevant impacts of individuals, products, companies, countries."
"The carbon footprint is commonly expressed as the carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) per unit of comparison."
"It sums up the total greenhouse gas emissions (not just carbon dioxide) caused by economic activities, events, organizations, services, etc."
"In other definitions, only the carbon dioxide emissions are taken into account but not those of other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide."
"For organizations, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol is commonly used. It includes three carbon emission scopes (the direct carbon emissions, called Scope 1) and the indirect carbon emissions (Scope 2 and 3)."
"The difference between Scope 2 and 3 is that Scope 3 emissions are those indirect emissions that are derived from the activities of an organization but that stem from sources which they do not own or control."
"For whole countries, consumption-based emissions accounting can be used to calculate their carbon footprint for a given year."
"This approach is based on input-output analysis. For example, analysis of global supply chains is possible using consumption-based accounting through input-output analysis assisted by using today's super-computing capacity."
"The GHG emissions listed in those national inventories are only from activities in the country itself (called territorial-based accounting or production-based accounting)."
"They do not take into account the production of goods and services (that may be imported) on behalf of residents, which would be called consumption-based accounting."
"A strength of comprehensive carbon footprint reporting (including Scope 3 emissions) is that it does away with loopholes of current systems."
"International transport is currently not included in countries' GHG inventories for the UNFCCC."
"Under comprehensive carbon footprint reporting (also called consumption-based carbon accounting), emissions are relegated to final demand, namely to those that consume the goods and services."
"Under comprehensive carbon footprint reporting... emissions are relegated to final demand, namely to those that consume the goods and services."