What is a carbon footprint?
A plain guide to what a carbon footprint is, what it includes, how big the average Indian footprint is, and what the number can and cannot tell you.
Overview
A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases released, directly and indirectly, because of a person, household, company, product or event, usually expressed in kilograms or tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) over a set period such as a year. It counts the fuel you burn yourself and the emissions hidden in electricity, food and goods.
Photo: "A view of Road Traffic Chandagaur to New Delhi India Highways" by ItsReallyRobert, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The idea is simple: almost everything we do uses energy or materials, and making that energy or material releases gases that warm the planet. A footprint adds those releases up so that you can see how large they are and where they come from.
Sources: IPCC AR6 Working Group III, Annex I: Glossary (2022); IPCC AR6 Working Group III, Summary for Policymakers (2022); Our World in Data, CO2 emissions per capita (Global Carbon Budget 2025); Our World in Data, India CO2 country profile; MoEFCC, India First Biennial Transparency Report (BTR-1) to the UNFCCC; MoEFCC, India Fourth Biennial Update Report (BUR-4), December 2024; 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Volume 2, Chapter 1; GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Revised Edition); SEBI circular on Business Responsibility and Sustainability Reporting, May 2021; Central Electricity Authority, CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian Power Sector, User Guide Version 22.0 (August 2026)
This article was prepared with AI assistance and checked by the GreenEye team against the sources shown in each section.
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