Climate dictionary: carbon, CO2, and carbon accounting from A to Z

Carbon footprint, GHG, emission factors, carbon neutrality... All these words related to the carbon footprint universe can seem abstract and discourage more than one person from getting interested in this fascinating tool!

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This climate dictionary is here to help you see more clearly with simple and illustrated definitions and resources to learn more if you want to deepen your knowledge.

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This climate lexicon is organized alphabetically like a dictionary, don't hesitate to use the table of contents to help you navigate!

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From A to F

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A

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ABC: Association for Low-Carbon Transition. It is the one that originated the carbon footprint methodology and is also responsible for raising awareness, training, federating, and providing concrete means of action to organizations and citizens to succeed in their low-carbon transition.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Method for evaluating the environmental impacts of a service or product throughout its existence, from design to end-of-life management. Used to measure the environmental impacts of a service or product to "diagnose" a product and its impact on the environment and thus be able to reduce it.

Additionality: Criterion for ensuring the quality of a carbon contribution project. The financing of a mitigation action (reduction, avoidance, carbon sequestration) is additional as soon as the action in question cannot be implemented without this financing, for economic or operational reasons.

ADEME: French Agency for Ecological Transition

Environmental labeling: CO2 or carbon score on a product. Ecoscore rating the climate impact of a product from A to E, as the Nutri-Score does for the nutritional quality of food products, for example. Will soon become mandatory in France and Europe in many sectors (food, textile, furniture, cosmetics, etc.).

Agribalyse (AGB): Open and free database of factors and other measures of the environmental impact of food products, updated by ADEME
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B

Carbon Base: It is a public database of emission factors that allow converting CO2 the activity of a person or a company. It is the main French multi-sectoral base, operated by ADEME.

BECCS: Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage. It's complicated but interesting, we note to define the acronym one of these days 💡

GES/BEGES: Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory. It is often the name given to the mandatory carbon footprint to which more and more French companies are subject.

Company carbon footprint: Tool for measuring a company's carbon footprint at a given moment, most often over a calendar year.

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Personal carbon footprint: Tool for measuring a person's carbon footprint at a given moment, most often over a calendar year. Allows you to understand the dependence of your lifestyle on greenhouse gases, responsible for climate change. It's a very good tool to assess your impact and find solutions to reduce it year after year.

Carbon budget: It is a quota of GES emissions acceptable per year and per person or per company if we want to stay below a certain global temperature, by limiting global warming.

C

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Value chain: Set of actors upstream and downstream of the company's activity, necessary for it: suppliers, transporters, distributors, customers...

Carbon contribution: This refers to carbon compensation but is a more accurate term that is becoming more widely used. Indeed, compensating for your carbon footprint conveys the idea that one can be carbon neutral by using this method, which is false! No one is carbon neutral, but we can all contribute to planetary neutrality by financing projects that capture CO2 present in the atmosphere or avoid greenhouse gas emissions.

Carbon compensation: This is the compensation of GES emissions by the purchase of "carbon credits" which allows financing projects that sequester or avoid GES emissions, thus achieving carbon neutrality.

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CO2e / CO2eq / eqCO2 / equivalent CO2: There are different greenhouse gases, whose emissions contribute to climate change: carbon dioxide (CO2), the most well-known, but also methane, nitrous oxide and some others. The warming power of these gases differs according to their chemical composition, methane thus contributes 30 times more to the warming of the atmosphere than carbon dioxide at an equivalent quantity.
CO2e (equivalent CO2) makes it possible to account for the effects of all these gases through a single unit.
We can thus have a standard and readable unit that takes into account the more or less important warming effects of all existing greenhouse gases.

Cradle-to-gate: This is a specific perimeter of a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), from the extraction of raw materials to the exit of the manufacturing plant.

Carbon credit: Provided to project holders allowing the sequestration of one ton of carbon. One credit = one ton of CO2 avoided or sequestered

ESG Criteria : ESG criteria allow financial actors to assess a company's CSR performance. That is, the relevance of its responses to 3 challenges: Environmental; Social; Governance.

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CSRD : The CSRD or Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive is a European directive adopted in 2022. It sets new standards and obligations for extra-financial reporting for 50,000 companies in Europe, and will gradually come into force from 2024.

D

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Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS): Decarbonization Absolute reduction of the company's direct and indirect emissions (Pillar A). It's complicated but interesting, we note to define the acronym one of these days �
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E

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Eco-score : It is a grade from A to E to classify food products according to their environmental impact. It is not (yet) displayed on products but can be found on applications like Yuka, ScanUp or Open Food Facts.

Avoided emissions: Generation of emission reductions compared to a counterfactual baseline scenario, outside the company's carbon footprint perimeter.

Significant emissions: Emissions representing the largest share of the company's total emissions. ISO 14064-1:2018 specifies in its Annex H a list of potential criteria for assessing the significance of indirect emissions, beyond the criterion of importance/relative share of emissions (which must be included by default):

• level of influence/leverage,
• risk/opportunity,
• specific sectoral guideline,
• outsourcing,
• employee engagement
  
  

For example, the Science-based Targets Initiative requires companies committed to SBT to include in their reduction perimeter all of their significant emissions, which they define as follows:

• the entirety of scope 1+2;
• scope 3 items representing at least 2⁄3 of the total scope 3.

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Carbon footprint : The carbon footprint is the measure of the *amount of greenhouse gases emitted by a human activity, based on its energy and raw material consumption. It can be the footprint of a person, an organization or a territory, or even a manufacturing process or an economic sector.

Ecological footprint : It is a tool developed by the Global Footprint Network that measures the amount of land area required to produce the goods and services that each person consumes and to absorb the waste they generate.
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Full-time equivalent (FTE) : The concept of full-time equivalent corresponds to an activity carried out on the basis of full-time, i.e. to the extent of the legal duration. Thus, 2 employees with a weekly working time of 17 hours and 30 minutes correspond to 1 FTE. FTE in English (full-time equivalent)

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F

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Emission factor (EF): It is a coefficient that allows converting activity data into GHG emissions. It is therefore the average emission rate of a given source, in relation to the related activities.

FEC: General Ledger File. It's complicated but interesting, we note to define the acronym one of these days 💡

Radiative forcing: The IPCC defines it as the balance between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation emissions from the atmosphere. When this forcing is positive, the Earth's temperature increases. This forcing can become positive due to factors such as GHGs.

Freight: It refers to the price of transporting goods or the transport itself.
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From G to L

G

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GHGs: Set of gases contributing to the intensification of the greenhouse effect, and therefore to climate change. The main ones are: CO2 (carbon dioxide), CH4 (methane), and N2O (nitrous oxide).

GHG Protocol : It is a method for calculating and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It is the most widely used tool internationally.

Greenwashing (or greenwashing in French) : This consists of exaggerating (or even inventing!) the eco-responsible aspect of a product or service. We make the customer believe that they are buying an engaged offer, with a low carbon footprint when it is false. Examples are (unfortunately) numerous, here is a selection.

I

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Carbon intensity: Comparing the total carbon footprints of two companies is not possible, as the quantities of emissions depend on the size, location, or activity of the company.
To make the comparison possible, and to allow companies to position themselves relative to others or to the averages of their sector, we use carbon intensity ratios.
The company's total CO2e emissions are reported to another indicator that takes into account the size of the company: often the number of employees and the turnover.
These ratios, expressed in CO2e per € of turnover or per employee, are comparable from one company to another.

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Carbon intensity per employee or CO2 Headquarter: Emissions related to employees = quantity of CO2 emitted over a defined scope (meals, travel, teleworking, premises) per employee of a company > allows companies to be compared independently of their sector of activity.

Monetary carbon intensity: Ratio between total emissions and the company's turnover (allows representing emissions per € of turnover).

J

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Fair level of contribution: Theoretical level corresponding, for a given issue, to the relative share of a collective effort that should ideally be attributed to an actor, based in particular on their responsibility for the issue and their ability to address it effectively.

L

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Low Carbon Label: Launched by the government in 2019, it allows certifying projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and carbon sequestration in all sectors (forestry, agriculture, transport, building, waste, etc.) and to enhance them economically.
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From M to R

M

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Carbon market: These are tools set up by the European Union to allow the exchange of greenhouse gas emission permits.

Science-Based Target Initiative (SBTi) method: See SBTi.

N

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Net zero / Net zero emissions: Situation of balance, at the level of the planet or a State, between two physical flows: greenhouse gas emissions (expressed in tCO2e) on the one hand, and CO2 sequestrations on the other hand.

Neutralization: In the vocabulary of the SBTi Net-Zero Standard, set of actions relating to carbon sequestration (pillar C of NZI) for an amount of CO2 equivalent to the company's residual emissions in 2050, according to a 1.5°C reduction trajectory.

Carbon neutrality: see Net zero

P

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Scope: Boundaries defined for the calculation of an indicator or the planning of an action.

• Temporal scope: time interval considered (for example: a calendar year)
• Spatial scope: geographical area considered (for example: metropolitan France)
• Organizational scope: set of sub-entities of the company considered (for example: a branch, a brand, or the totality of a group)

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Permanence: For carbon sequestration: assurance that the ton of CO2 is sequestered in a sustainable way, and will not be released back into the atmosphere in the medium term, for example due to a forest fire or deforestation of anthropogenic origin.

Global Warming Potential (GWP): This is an indicator that allows grouping all substances related to the increase in the greenhouse effect under a single indicator.

Product Environmental Footprint (PEF): PEF is a method for evaluating and displaying the environmental impacts of a product. This policy is developed by the European Union… Which noted, in 2003, the use of 230 labels on its territory! This measure therefore responds to a need for standardization and reliability of environmental data.

PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness): Ratio used to qualify the energy efficiency of a computer operating center > the closer it is to 1 the more efficient the server is (the best servers have a PUE of 1.2).

Carbon sink: This is a system that naturally absorbs CO2 emitted into the atmosphere such as forests and oceans.
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R

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Carbon intensity ratio: See carbon intensity.

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From S to Z(ero net)

S

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Science-Based Target Initiative (SBTi): Science-Based Targets (SBTs) are greenhouse gas emission reduction targets that provide organizations with a trajectory aligned with climate science. Defining an SBT is an integral part of a credible climate strategy.

Scope: Categories of emissions for a carbon footprint (1 - direct emissions / 2- indirect emissions related to electricity / 3- other emissions)

CO2 Sequestration: Long-term or permanent storage in carbon sinks (long-lasting products, stable ecosystems, geological sinks) of atmospheric CO2, either through natural processes (plant growth, organic matter decomposition) or technological processes (direct carbon capture, biomass transformation)

T

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Tonne of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e / tCO2eq): Reference unit for accounting greenhouse gas emissions from a product, service, person, or company. See CO2e for more information. For example, the average carbon footprint of a French person is just over 9 tonnes of CO2e per year. A round trip from Paris to New York by plane generates approximately 2 tCO2eq per passenger.

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Carbon trajectory / reduction trajectory / decarbonization trajectory: A greenhouse gas emission reduction trajectory is a roadmap established by a company to set long-term emission reduction targets.
The defined objectives and indicators used (total carbon footprint or carbon intensity) to track these objectives vary by company and industry, but they all have a common goal: achieving global carbon neutrality.
The trajectory defined by the company indicates the annual emission reductions needed to achieve the objective, allowing the company to identify each year the actions to be implemented to meet the reduction target.
International standards provide the framework for defining these trajectories, such as the SBTi method defined earlier.

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U

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Uniqueness, for an emission reduction or carbon sequestration: This means it is only counted once.
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With these definitions, you should better master the vocabulary related to carbon footprint and climate challenges! And if the subject fascinates you as much as it does us, do not hesitate to take a look at our other content.

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