Carbon management glossary
This carbon management glossary defines the terms that turn up in a CBAM data request, a customer questionnaire or a bank's green-lending file. Every entry is written for someone who has been asked for a number and needs to know what is actually being asked — not for a sustainability specialist.
Why a carbon management glossary matters here
Most of these terms arrive in English, in a spreadsheet, from a customer who assumes you already have a sustainability department. You probably do not. The vocabulary is small — perhaps thirty terms carry almost every request — and once it is clear, most questionnaires stop being intimidating and start being administrative.
The three scopes
- Scope 1 emissions — direct emissions from sources you own or control.
- Scope 2 emissions — indirect emissions from the energy you buy.
- Scope 3 emissions — everything else in your value chain, in fifteen categories.
If you want the three explained together rather than separately, start with Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions explained. For the fifteen Scope 3 categories one by one, see Scope 3 categories explained.
Regulation and method terms
- Carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) — the EU regulation that prices the emissions embedded in imported goods.
- GHG inventory — the structured account of emissions a bank or customer means by a baseline.
- Emission factors — the conversion from activity data to emissions, and why the source matters.
- Calculation trace — the stored path from an input to a result.
- VSME — the EU's voluntary sustainability reporting standard for SMEs.
Where to go next
The glossary defines terms. To learn how to produce the numbers they describe, read how to use Karbon360, or the documentation for the method behind every figure. Every definition here links onward to the guide that shows how the number is produced in practice.