Carbon Glossary

Direct emissions from owned sources.

Fuels burned in company vehicles, boilers, furnaces, and fugitive refrigerant leaks.

Indirect emissions from purchased energy.

Electricity, steam, heating and cooling bought from utilities. Reported as location- and market-based.

Value-chain emissions, up- and downstream.

Purchased goods, business travel, employee commuting, use of sold products, end-of-life. Often >70% of footprint.

Reductions wouldn't have happened anyway.

A project is additional if the carbon revenue is what enabled it — without crediting, the activity would not occur.

Emissions shifted, not avoided.

When a project displaces emissions to another location or sector instead of eliminating them.

How long the carbon stays stored.

Concerns whether stored carbon (e.g. in forests) might be re-released by fire, pests, or land-use change.

Measurement, Reporting, Verification.

The end-to-end process for quantifying climate outcomes and having them independently checked.

Science Based Targets initiative.

Validates corporate emission reduction targets aligned with the Paris Agreement (1.5°C pathway).

Lifecycle Assessment.

Cradle-to-grave evaluation of environmental impacts across raw materials, manufacturing, use and disposal.

Compensating residual emissions.

Buying verified credits for reductions or removals elsewhere — best used after deep internal reductions.

Balanced sources and sinks.

Cutting emissions by ~90% and neutralising the rest with high-quality removals — not the same as 'carbon neutral'.

Tonnes of CO₂ equivalent.

Standard unit normalising different greenhouse gases by their global warming potential (GWP).