How is a carbon footprint different from related terms? — What is a carbon footprint?

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.

Last updated October 23, 2026
GreenEye Team

Term	What it means
Carbon footprint	Total greenhouse gas emissions caused by a person, company, product or event over a period, in CO2e
Emissions	The gases released; the footprint is the total of these from all sources linked to you
Emission intensity	Emissions per unit of something, such as per rupee of GDP, per tonne of steel or per kWh
Product carbon footprint	Emissions over the life of one product, from raw material to disposal
Carbon offset	A credit for a reduction or removal made elsewhere, used to balance emissions; it does not shrink the footprint itself

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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