Carbon Footprint
Does a carbon footprint only account for carbon dioxyde or does it also consider other greenhouse gases?
Typically, the carbon footprint is not only about carbon dioxide (CO2 ) emissions, but also about the other important greenhouse gases (GHGs) that contribute to global warming. The climate impact of the different greenhouse gases is translated into CO2 equivalents (abbreviation: "CO2e"), as those gases have different global warming potentials (the Global Warming Potential (GWP) is a measure developed to allow comparisons of the global warming impacts of different gases). The larger the GWP, the more a given gas warms the earth compared to CO2 over that time period.
The translation of these GHG into CO2e allows an easy comparison. Carbon footprint therefore accounts for the following GHGs:
- Carbond Dioxide (CO2)
- Methane (CH4)
- Nitrous oxide (N2O)
as well as the fluorinated GHGs (so-called F-gases):
- Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs)
- Perfluorocarbons (PFCs)
- Sulphur hexaflouride (SF6)
- Nitrogen trifluoride (NF3)