Carbon Accounting
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Carbon accounting, also known as “greenhouse gas accounting,” refers to the methodologies used to quantify how much carbon dioxide emissions a business or an individual produce. It can generally be split into two categories: physical carbon accounting, which looks at quantifying physical amounts greenhouse gas emissions to the atmosphere and financial carbon accounting which looks at giving carbon a financial market value.
GHG Protocol
Governments, business and individuals are becoming more concerned with their own contributions to climate change and are actively engaged in reporting their “carbon footprint”, or greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from products or activities, to identify strategies to reduce their climate impacts.
The GHG Protocol is the most utilized tool to understand, quantify and manage GHG emissions.
It provides standards and guidance in preparing a GHG emissions reporting and is classified into three “scopes”, based on their sources
Scopes 1, 2 and 3
- Scope 1 emissions from sources that are owned or controlled by the entity
- Scope 2 indirect emissions coming from the generation of purchased electricity, steam, heating and cooling
- Scope 3 indirect emissions from sources not owned or directly controlled by the entity, but related to the entity’s activities. For example, employee travel and commuting
Carbon Neutral vs Net Zero
Carbon neutral ( Carbon Neutrality) means that the CO2 emissions an entity (business, organization, individual, product, or service) produces has been “balanced” by funding the equal amount of savings elsewhere in the world. Having a balance between emitting carbon and absorbing carbon from the atmosphere in carbon sinks.
Carbon sink is any system that absorbs more carbon than it emits. The main natural carbon sinks are soil, forests and oceans.
Net Zero is a similar concept to Carbon Neutral. although It goes beyond carbon and includes all greenhouse gases being emitted into the atmosphere to be equivalent to the greenhouse gases being removed from the atmosphere.
Carbon Negative and Climate Positive
Taking that idea a step further. Carbon negative is the reduction of an entity’s carbon footprint to less than neutral, by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere, or preventing more CO₂ than is emitted.
Carbon positive and Climate positive are used by some companies as a marketing terms to describe their efforts to reduce emissions. Both terms are used to describe what scientists would call Carbon Negative