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Introduction to Carbon Accounting
Updated over 2 months ago

What is a company’s carbon footprint?

A company's carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases it emits through various activities and sources. These emissions are categorized as direct and indirect.

Direct Emissions: Direct emissions are those that a company produces itself. For example, factories emit carbon dioxide directly when burning fuels like gas and coal. The company's vehicles also contribute to the footprint whenever they burn fuel.

Indirect Emissions: Indirect emissions occur when a company uses goods and services such as electricity, materials, and transportation. The production of these goods and services typically involves burning fuels, leading to greenhouse gas emissions.

In summary, carbon footprint measures how much a company adds to global warming by emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

How is a company’s carbon footprint measured?

  1. Gather data on your company's emission sources, like electricity use.

  2. Enter gathered data into the tool.

  3. Let the tool calculate the total carbon footprint by converting data about all emission sources into an amount of carbon dioxide

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