Carbon footprint

What it is measured in

In tonnes of CO2 equivalent, abbreviated tCO2e. That unit lets you add the seven greenhouse gases into a single figure.

How it is calculated

For each source, activity data is multiplied by its emission factor. Then everything is added up.

The arithmetic is easy. The hard part is having the data: every invoice, from every site, for the whole year.

Whose footprint

The term is used for four things. An organization's footprint counts the emissions of a company over a year, and it is the one regulators and customers ask for. A product's footprint covers its life cycle and has its own standard, ISO 14067. A personal footprint estimates the emissions of daily life. And the footprint of an event or a territory is measured too.

Chile's footprint as a country was 111,049 kilotonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2022, excluding the forestry and land use sector.

How it is organized

An organization's footprint is divided into Scope 1, 2 and 3.