Reviewing the carbon footprint landscape: a comparative analysis of organizational contributions to climate change.

Abstract

Global warming is a major issue mainly caused by the emission of greenhouse gases (GHG) due to anthropogenic activities. Calculating carbon footprint (CFP) is the valuable first step to quantify GHG emissions. Many organizations, including universities, fire brigades, rescue services, food manufacturers, hotels, and hospitals, are now estimating their CFP to monitor their impact on global warming and climate change. However, there is a lack of comparative studies about variations of organizational CFP in different sectors related to estimated methodologies, geography and effectiveness of mitigation strategies. This review study examines these variations among organizations and identifies effective emission reduction strategies to address climate change. The article screening process was conducted by considering the peer-reviewed, research articles related to the CFP of organizations published from 2005-2023, highlighting keywords such as “CFP of “organization”, “reduction”, “strategies”, and “worldwide” using the “Google Scholar” academic search engine. For the final data analysis, a total of 20 articles were obtained from the screening process. Results show that many methods exist to analyze CFP such as life cycle assessment, process-based approach, input-output analysis, and hybrid approach. Those methods were applied under different scopes (Scope 1: Direct GHG emissions. Scope 2: Indirect electricity GHG emissions. Scope 3: Other indirect GHG emissions), system boundaries, data sources, and emission factors. It was found that CFP can vary according to the location, size of land area, and developing status of the country. Organizational CFP in Asian countries ranges from 70 to 4650 tCO2-e/Yr. In contrast, non-Asian countries, like Italy, Colombia, and USA ranged between 3500 and 13500 tCO2-e/Yr suggesting that organizational CFP is a lower value in Asian countries than in European countries. Many studies show that most CFP occurs from indirect emissions and travel-related emissions dominate in most organizations under Scope 3. Organizations have taken necessary actions including adopting renewable energy sources, implementing energy-efficient technologies, green transportation, waste management practices, carbon capture and storage and carbon offset programs. Informing these effective responses to climate change will offer vital guidance for those involved in shaping public policy in different sectors.