Embodied Carbon: Definition, How It's Measured and Why It's the Critical Lever for Industrial Decarbonization

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Embodied carbon refers to the total greenhouse gas emissions associated with the extraction, processing, manufacturing, and transportation of a product, component, or material — everything that happens before a product enters its use phase. It is the "carbon baked into" a product: fixed at the point of manufacture and impossible to change once the product leaves the factory gate.

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In contrast to operational carbon — the emissions generated during a product's use (for example, the fuel burned by a vehicle or the electricity consumed by a machine) — embodied carbon is entirely determined by material choices, production processes, and supply chain decisions made during design and procurement.

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Embodied carbon and the product lifecycle

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Embodied carbon corresponds directly to the cradle-to-gate scope of a Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) calculation: all emissions from raw material extraction through manufacturing and up to the point where the product leaves the production facility. It is the portion of the full lifecycle carbon footprint that product developers, material engineers, and procurement teams have the most direct influence over — and therefore the most actionable lever for decarbonization at the product level.

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For product categories where use-phase emissions are low or zero — structural components, packaging, many industrial parts — embodied carbon is not just a part of the lifecycle footprint: it is the lifecycle footprint.

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What drives embodied carbon

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The primary drivers of embodied carbon in manufactured products are:

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• Material choice: high-carbon materials like primary aluminium (~12 kg CO₂e/kg) or carbon fibre carry far more embodied carbon per kilogram than alternatives like secondary aluminium (~1.5 kg CO₂e/kg) or certain polymers — making material selection the single most impactful design decision for embodied carbon
• Production energy: the electricity and heat consumed in manufacturing processes carries embodied carbon based on the energy mix of the production location — a factory powered by renewable energy produces significantly lower embodied carbon per unit than one on a coal-heavy grid
• Supply chain origin: where materials come from and how they are processed affects their emission factors significantly — primary steel produced in an electric arc furnace with renewable energy has a fundamentally different carbon profile than blast-furnace steel
• Transport: logistics distances and modes add embodied carbon, though typically as a smaller share than materials and production

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Embodied carbon in Scope 3 and CSRD reporting

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For manufacturers, the embodied carbon of purchased goods and materials is the primary component of Scope 3 Category 1 emissions — purchased goods and services — which is typically the largest single category in any industrial company's Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF). Reducing embodied carbon across the supply chain is therefore not just a product design goal: it is central to any credible SBTi target and a key deliverable for CSRD/ESRS E1 climate transition plans.

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How to calculate embodied carbon

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Calculating embodied carbon requires exactly the same data infrastructure as a cradle-to-gate PCF: a Bill of Materials (BoM), verified emission factors for each material and process, and a calculation methodology aligned with ISO 14067 and the GHG Protocol. The result is expressed in kg or tonnes of CO₂e per unit of product.

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For companies managing large product portfolios, the key challenge is doing this at scale — across hundreds or thousands of BoM positions, with reliable emission factors for all materials. This is precisely what the sustamizer® and the sustamize CO₂e database are built to support.

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Want to calculate and reduce the embodied carbon of your products?

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Explore our CO₂e database and PCF calculation tools, or contact our team to access the sustamizer® and identify the embodied carbon hotspots across your product portfolio.

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