Normative unveiled its Carbon Glossary, which collects carbon accounting’s most  common terms, abbreviations, and frameworks in one place. 

“We want to make carbon accounting accessible to all businesses,” says Eline Wajon, head of climate strategy at Normative. “The Carbon Glossary is one of the many steps we have taken recently to help businesses globally access accurate and truthful carbon accounting.”

Carbon accounting is a relatively new field and one that is rife with jargon. The Carbon Glossary helps people decode its most frequently used concepts, including the science behind global warming, the technical details of carbon accounting, carbon removal technologies, relevant pieces of legislation, and various sustainability reporting frameworks. It’s continuously updated to keep pace with the rapidly evolving field. 

To reach the climate targets set out by the Paris Agreement, companies must reduce their carbon emissions to half of preindustrial levels by 2030, and to net zero by 2050. A recent IPCC report cautioned that action must be taken quickly and comprehensively to stay on track to meet these targets and stated that reducing business carbon emissions will require coordinated action throughout value chains to promote all mitigation options.

Carbon accounting allows companies to take climate action. A company using carbon accounting can measure its carbon footprint by totaling up the greenhouse gas emissions produced by its business activities. Then, the company can begin to reduce its carbon footprint, starting with its largest sources of emissions.

“In order to reduce our emissions, we need to start measuring them, and, to trust these measurements, we need to understand how they work,” Wajon said. “We hope this glossary can be a launching-off point for businesses to understand their emissions and the impact they can make by reducing them.” 

The tool is based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP), and covers Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions, accounting for the full supply chain and tracking progress over time. Normative automates the otherwise costly and time-consuming data collection and calculation process, and provides tailored reduction strategies.

The Carbon Glossary was created to lower the barrier to entry for companies to begin carbon accounting, and subsequently reduce their carbon footprints.