| Carbon credits: | Units representing a quantity (usually defined as one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent) of greenhouse gas that is either removed from the atmosphere or never emitted. They include voluntary carbon credits, which are produced from unregulated projects and compliance credits which are used in regulated systems such as the Kyoto Protocol and EU Emissions Trading Scheme. |
| Carbon Dioxide (CO2): | A molecule made of one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms, carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most significant contributor overall to the greenhouse effect and climate change, due to the volume of CO2 emissions. CO2 is emitted when fossil fuels such as oil or coal are burnt, and when living material such as biomass decays or burns. |
| Carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e): | For simplicity, and because it is the most significant greenhouse gas in terms of total emission volumes, CO2 is used as the basic unit when referring to greenhouse gas emissions. In order to allow for the fact that some greenhouse gases have a larger global warming potential than others, emissions are referred to in terms of the equivalent amount of CO2 that would have to be emitted to have the same impact on the climate. |
| Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP): | An independent not-for-profit organisation which collects and publishes corporate climate change information submitted voluntarily by companies throughout the world. The CDP provides companies with a methodology and process for disclosures concerning their climate change impact, and holds these submissions in a publicly accessible database. www.cdproject.net/ |
| Carbon footprint: | A calculation of an organisation’s carbon emissions resulting from a defined set of business activities over a specific period of time. |
| Carbon forecast: | A prediction of the amount of greenhouse gas emissions an organisation will cause over a given period of time. |
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