What is a carbon footprint in simple words?

What types of carbon footprint assessments exist? Why are more and more companies paying attention to accounting and verification of their carbon footprint? What standards can be used for conducting the assessment? We have collected the answers to these quite popular questions in this article. 

In simple words, a carbon footprint is the amount of greenhouse gases emitted and absorbed by an organization, an activity or during the product life cycle. Although greenhouse gas emissions only will be referred to in the current article, we should keep in mind that greenhouse gas removals should be also considered where it is applicable for the organization.

There are two key types of carbon footprint assessment:

1. Corporate carbon footprint (CCF) - greenhouse gas emissions from an organization's operations over an annual period. These emissions are divided into Scope 1 - emissions over which the organization has direct control, Scope 2 - indirect emissions from purchased energy, and Scope 3 - indirect supply chain emissions over which the organization does not have direct control.
2. Product carbon footprint (PCF) - greenhouse gas emissions from the product life cycle chain over a period that fully reflects the technological process. The calculation differs from the corporate carbon footprint in that emissions are attributed to a unit of production, for example, a ton of steel, grain, a liter of diesel fuel, etc. 

Besides, the following terms are widely used:

• Carbon emissions intensity is the ratio of corporate emissions to the amount of products produced during the period.
• Specific embedded emissions mean the embedded emissions of one tonne of goods, expressed as tonnes of CO2e emissions per tonne of goods. Specific embedded emissions are calculated under the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM).

The calculating methodologies mentioned above allow to obtain the amount of emissions in tons of CO2-equivalent. CO2-eq. units are used to estimate emissions of various greenhouse gases on a single basis.