Carbon Footprint: Ways to Fight the State and Companies

Kh. A. Gubasheva

and B. R. Bolotbaev

Kadyrov Chechen State University, 32 Sheripova Street, Grozny, Russia

Grozny State Oil Technical University Named After M.D. Millionshchikov, Grozny, Russia

Keywords: Carbon footprint, consumption, environment, planet.

Abstract: Modern people are used to living on the machine. When everything is so accessible, it seems that it will

always be so. But this is just an illusion that pushes overflowing grocery carts with us, buys another dress, or

rushes to get a new generation smartphone. As a result of overconsumption, huge amounts of carbon dioxide

and methane enter the atmosphere every day, which lead to serious climate changes. Each of us leaves his

mark on the planet, but today this common phrase takes on a new meaning. This article will discuss the

concept of the carbon footprint, its impact on our planet and international experience in reducing it.

1 INTRODUCTION

Reduction of human impact on the environment is

one of the priorities of Russia's scientific and

technological development strategies. The Carbon

project is an important part of it. It involves the

creation of an environmental control system using

remote measurement of the carbon balance. For this

purpose, a carbon test site called "WAY CARBON"

was built in the Chechen Republic (

Chugunkova,

2018

The carbon polygon is a special territory where

the development and testing of technologies that are

related to global warming are carried out. This is a

measurement of the flow of climate-active gases. In

addition to CO2, there is also methane, nitrous oxide

and many other gases. Now we have a new era. The

economy is transforming into a green area, we need

low-carbon technologies that would help reduce

greenhouse gas emissions, and we need special

climate projects to absorb these same greenhouse

gases from the atmosphere.

Landfills are special places, this is a special

ecosystem where this processing will be,

measurement of greenhouse gases, both in terms of

emissions and absorption (

Durmanov, 2022).

2 MANUSCRIPT PREPARATION

In Russia, cross-border work on the study of

greenhouse gases, especially in forest systems, has

been carried out for a long time, but a little bit

fragmented. And in the world it is such a tangible

scientific trend. Because in the coming years, these

very measurements of greenhouse gases will be the

basis of the economy: carbon taxes, special penalties

that will be paid by those whose products are too

energy-intensive, which leaves too much an

environmental footprint. All this requires

measurements of these same carbon footprints

(

Porfiriev, 2010).

It is assumed that this project will always be

relevant, since in addition to technologies that can be

quickly developed or quickly tested and seen in one

season, experimental sites were laid, the results of

which can be seen in 5-10 years. Here we are talking

about the global problem of the 21st century, about

climate change. And so the researchers expect that

there will be more than a dozen polygons and around

each polygon there will be trial experimental sites.

And in general, we will be able to get the necessary

amount of information in order to train our machines.

The topic of carbon balance, the topic of the low-

carbon economy is gigantic. People of various

professions are involved in it: botanists, soil

scientists, foresters, biologists, specialists in genetics,

biochemistry, climatologists. And lately, more and

more of the work is done by IT people, these are

people who specialize in super-large amounts of data,

282

Gubasheva, K. and Bolotbaev, B.

Carbon Footprint: Ways to Fight the State and Companies.

DOI: 10.5220/0011570400003524

In Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Methods, Models, Technologies for Sustainable Development (MMTGE 2022) - Agroclimatic Projects and Carbon Neutrality, pages

282-287

ISBN: 978-989-758-608-8

 2023 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. Under CC license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

machine learning, and work with neural networks.

According to our American colleagues, about 90% of

the work is IT.

Polygons should not be limited to research work,

they must be educational institutions. This means that

there will be special workshops, seminars, special

areas where students, graduate students, and

researchers of various qualifications will be able to

work. After all, we are talking about the fact that we

will need, perhaps, hundreds of thousands of new

jobs, on the horizon of 5-7 years, in order for us to

manage this new green ecological economy.

It is assumed that the entire territory of the country

will be covered with polygons and test experimental

areas with different densities, depending on what

conditions are there, whether there is agriculture there

or only forests, what kind of ecosystems are there. But

the first polygons that are already being opened in the

country have a very interesting biography, and as a

result of the work done, it is planned to place them so

that the network of these polygons being laid down

would cover the most interesting places in our

country in a shorter time from the point of view of

climate research.

Over the past decade, there has been an increase

in the temperature in the environment, all of which is

associated with an increasing amount of carbon

dioxide released. As we already know, the reason for

this is many industries that emit carbon dioxide in the

course of their activities, which results in

environmental pollution.

3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Reducing carbon emissions can be achieved by

moving towards energy sources and industrial

processes that produce fewer greenhouse gases,

thereby moving towards a low-carbon economy. The

shift to renewable energy sources such as wind

power, geothermal power and solar power, as well as

nuclear power, reduces greenhouse gas emissions.

While the production of both renewable and non-

renewable energy results in some form of carbon

emissions, renewable sources produce little or almost

no carbon emissions. The transition to a low-carbon

economy would also mean making changes to current

industrial and agricultural processes to reduce carbon

emissions, such as changing the diet of livestock,

such as cattle, could potentially reduce methane

production by 40%. Carbon projects and emissions

trading are often used to reduce carbon emissions, and

it is sometimes even possible to prevent carbon

dioxide from entering the atmosphere entirely (for

example, through carbon cleanup) (

Pinyavina, 2021

One way to introduce carbon neutral products is

to make these products cheaper and more profitable

than carbon positive fuels. Various companies have

pledged to become carbon neutral or negative by

2050, including: Microsoft, Delta Air Lines, BP,

IKEA, and BlackRock. However, without cheaper

carbon-neutral products, companies are less likely to

switch to renewables.

Carbon neutrality means that there is a balance

between the release of carbon and the absorption of

carbon from the atmosphere in carbon sinks. The

removal of carbon monoxide from the atmosphere

and its subsequent storage is known as carbon

sequestration. To achieve zero emissions, all of the

world's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions must be

balanced by carbon sequestration.

A carbon sink is any system that takes in more

carbon than it releases. The main natural carbon sinks

are soil, forests and oceans. Natural sinks are

estimated to remove 9.5 to 11 Gt of CO2 per year.

Annual global CO2 emissions reached 38.0 Gt in

2020.

To date, no artificial carbon sinks have been able

to remove carbon from the atmosphere on the scale

needed to combat global warming.

Carbon stored in natural sinks such as forests is

released into the atmosphere through wildfires, land-

use change or logging. This is why it is so important

to reduce carbon emissions in order to achieve

climate neutrality (

Durmanov, 2022

Forests are natural CO2 sinks. But, firstly, this

happens until a certain age of the trees. Old trees, on

the contrary, strive to emit CO2. Under natural

conditions, the forest as a complex ecosystem is in

balance: how much it absorbs, the same amount it

gives. Absorbing capacity is possessed by growing,

young forests or forests planted on the site of

clearings.

Thus, it is new forest plantations that are

important for more efficient absorption of greenhouse

gases. This is a long process - 5–7 years before the

appearance of growth, which can be considered as

absorbing CO2 from the atmosphere.

However, existing forests should not be left

without protection. In addition to ethical, there are

also climatic reasons. Indeed, in the event of forest

fires, all the accumulated carbon will again be in the

atmosphere.

Forest is a difficult category to account for. For

example, you rented a forest that was previously

considered a reserve, and there was no supervision

over it, and dug a moat around it, installed sensors to

Carbon Footprint: Ways to Fight the State and Companies

283

protect it from possible fires. If a year after you rented

it and there were no fires, would this mean that you

made additional CO2 absorption or emission

reductions?

It's not clear if there was a fire if you hadn't done

anything. That is, we can draw conclusions only over

long intervals and very probabilistically. By the way,

it is precisely because of the high uncertainty and

volatility that the EU does not count absorption by

forests against greenhouse gas emissions. That is, if

your company is included in the number of regulated

companies, it is impossible to compensate for

emissions by absorption in forests.

Thus, not all forest projects will automatically be

equated with climate projects. Just fence off a piece

of forest and say that everything that has grown there

is a carbon absorption, and you won’t be able to sell

it. If a company is going to reduce its carbon footprint

in this way, then it needs to deal not only with

protection, but also with planting forests.

However, the forest theme still requires further

study. It is possible that the absorbing capacity of

green massifs is greater than we expect.

The absorption coefficients that we have now

were calculated in other climatic conditions. It is

possible that now trees can absorb more CO2,

because its concentration in the atmosphere has

increased.

A high share of nuclear energy, large forest areas,

due to the closure of many industrial enterprises after

the collapse of the USSR, greenhouse gas emissions

into the atmosphere also decreased. However, our

country also found its Achilles heel. It's about

methane. It has already been said above that CO2 is

considered to be the main culprit in global warming.

But at the same time, they forget about methane,

and yet it has a 25–30 times stronger greenhouse

effect. True, it is necessary to take into account the

classification of greenhouse gases into short-lived

and long-lived. And methane lives in the atmosphere

for 12.5 years, while carbon dioxide lives for

centuries and even millennia.

That is why greenhouse emissions are measured

more often not in tons, but in conventional units of

CO2 equivalent, for which such a criterion as the

global warming potential is used. It reflects the

relative increase in atmospheric radiation caused by

an increase in the atmospheric content of a given

greenhouse gas by 1 ton compared to one ton of CO2

over time.

Usually it is 100 years, it is on this interval that

methane exceeds CO2 by 25 times. If we take a

shorter period of time, then the difference can grow

up to 85 times. The methane topic is directly related

to the oil and gas industry. One such example was

given by Mikhail Yulkin. We are talking about

satellite images, which show that the pipe belonging

to Gazprom is “floating”.

From this, a conclusion was drawn about the

anthropogenic nature of methane leakage into the

atmosphere. However, representatives of domestic

mining companies do not consider this method to be

correct, and the release of methane into the

atmosphere is associated with the thawing of

permafrost.

The situation is made even more confusing by the

fact that when assessing methane leakage, a

calculation method is used, rather than direct

observations, when leaks are not measured, but are

actually “assigned” based on the methodology.

But in this case, this, as well as shooting from

satellites, is not the best solution, the general director

of CarbonLab LLC believes. Priority should be given

to point observations, especially since there is now

equipment on the market that allows you to detect

leaks remotely. In this case, it will be possible to

determine with great certainty the origin of methane

in the atmosphere.

Indeed, a large amount of methane is emitted in a

"natural" way, due to the melting of permafrost. But

the quotation marks here are not accidental; in the

final analysis, the main reason is also related to

human activity. However, there is an important caveat

here, it no longer falls on the "carbon balance" of a

company that is engaged in mining in a particular

area.

In general, the issue of reducing methane

emissions at the international level was first raised so

seriously at the conference in Glasgow. It was

decided to reduce methane emissions by 30% by

2030, which will reduce the temperature rise on the

planet by 0.2 degrees by 2050. This document was

signed by representatives of more than 100 countries,

Russia is not among them.

Another way to reduce emissions and achieve

carbon neutrality is to offset the emissions produced

in one sector by reducing them in another. This can

be achieved through investments in renewable

energy, energy efficiency, or other low-carbon clean

technologies. The EU Emissions Trading System

(ETS) is an example of a carbon offset system.

Another example of an initiative to reduce

emissions is the carbon frontier adjustment

mechanism, which will apply carbon prices to

imported goods from countries that are less climate

ambitious. This should prevent companies from

moving production out of the EU to countries with

less stringent greenhouse gas emissions regulations.

MMTGE 2022 - I International Conference "Methods, models, technologies for sustainable development: agroclimatic projects and carbon

neutrality", Kadyrov Chechen State University Chechen Republic, Grozny, st. Sher

284

The Commission is due to propose this carbon levy in

2021.

One of the first in the list of CO2 emissions for

2020 are such countries as China, USA, India, Russia,

Japan, etc.

List of countries by CO2 emissions in megatons

for 2020:

–

China – 9899.3;

–

USA – 4457.2;

–

India – 2302.3;

–

Russia – 1482.2;

–

Japan – 1027.0;

–

Iran – 678.2;

–

Germany –604.9;

–

Republic of Korea – 577.8;

–

Saudi Arabia –570.8;

–

Indonesia –545.4.

The presented list does not end with these

countries, it is much longer, according to the

indicators, you can see the dynamics in a positive

direction, that emissions in 2020 are already

significantly lower than in 2018 for many of the listed

countries.

The process of assessing the carbon footprint is

based on a product life cycle analysis and, in

accordance with the international standards of the

ISO 14040 series, includes four stages.

Step I. The goals and scope of the product carbon

footprint analysis should be formulated. The purpose

of the assessment is to quantify the impact that a

particular product (good, service, activity) has on

global warming by taking into account the amount of

significant emissions of all greenhouse gases

throughout the life cycle of the product. Depending

on the strategic objectives of the company and the

expectations of stakeholders, a specific goal

statement can be chosen. For example, informing the

buyer about the carbon neutrality of products or about

their compliance with a certain environmental

category in terms of the size of the carbon footprint

established by the state, regional or industry climate

program. The scope of the carbon footprint

assessment includes (

Smirnova, 2012.):

– defining the boundary of the product system,

including the physical boundaries within which

the product life cycle is carried out, the stages

and processes within the life cycle selected for

the assessment of the carbon footprint;

– selection of a functional unit - the final

quantitative measure of a product or process, to

which the volume of greenhouse gas emissions

is reduced;

– determination of requirements for the

composition and quality of data, including a list

of greenhouse gases to be taken into account,

measurement error, external sources;

– determination of the period of time during

which the product system does not undergo

significant changes that affect the quantitative

assessment of the carbon footprint;

– choice of calculation methodology;

– decision to include specific

emissions/removals of greenhouse gases, for

example, due to changes in land use, forest

management and agricultural land

management;

– the content of the report and other final

documents on the quantitative assessment of

the carbon footprint of products.

Stage II. The main step in assessing the carbon

footprint of products is the inventory analysis of the

life cycle. It identifies processes at each stage of the

life cycle that generate significant greenhouse gas

emissions. For each process, inputs and outputs of

materials, fuels and energy are analyzed and

emissions are calculated. This step collects emission

data from the supply chain (mining, transportation

and pre-treatment of raw materials, energy

production) and downstream stages of the product life

cycle (use, disposal, final waste disposal). At the

same time, companies use external information that

can be obtained under contracts with suppliers or

collected through analytical research.

Stage III. The carbon footprint is quantified

throughout the entire life cycle. Greenhouse gas

emissions data are expressed in common units, which

are traditionally tons of CO2e, and are adjusted to the

functional unit of the product system.

Stage IV. Interpreting the results is the final step

in quantifying your carbon footprint. In accordance

with the goals and objectives of the study,

conclusions are formulated. In particular, conclusions

can be drawn regarding (

Porfiriev, 2019):

– compliance of the carbon footprint with

industry norms, benchmarks and/or certain

environmental categories;

– the effectiveness of the fulfillment of

quantitative obligations in the field of reducing

greenhouse gas emissions;

– meeting stakeholder expectations.

Many companies have already begun to compare

their CO2 emissions per unit of output with other

businesses, and if they are smaller, use this

information as a competitive advantage. If this is not

the case, in the coming years they will have to look

for ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions - to

increase energy efficiency, use "green" types of

energy, and finance compensatory measures.

Carbon Footprint: Ways to Fight the State and Companies

285

In the latter case, it is assumed that the "surplus"

of CO2 emissions can be entrusted to forest

ecosystems, which will absorb it from the atmosphere

and turn it into wood as a result of photosynthesis.

This carbon will no longer contribute to global

climate change, but rather help trees grow. But in

order for this option to work, the area of forests must

increase, they must be taken care of and protected,

because any forest fire in a few days can destroy all

the competitive advantages of the goods of a large

company.

If greenhouse gas emissions are very high, a

company may ask another company or even the

government, which is better at managing forests, to

help get rid of the excess. Of course, you will have to

pay for this, and such a system is called greenhouse

gas trading.

Even the clothes we wear, which the workers

made in a factory powered by electricity from burning

the same minerals (coal, gas or oil), but there is a very

small chance that these factories are powered by clean

energy from a hydroelectric or nuclear power plant ,

and every year this probability increases. For heating

and lighting your home, coal or gas is also burned

somewhere. Even the garbage you throw away almost

certainly ends up in a landfill where methane is

produced, or is burned to form carbon dioxide as well.

Everything that is emitted by our consumption

remains in the atmosphere, forming our carbon

footprint. The carbon footprint itself is the amount of

CO2 equivalent (methane, nitrous oxide and other

greenhouse gases, which are also converted into

carbon dioxide using special formulas) that enters the

atmosphere due to your activity (

Zhuravleva, 2017).

The main share of the carbon footprint falls, of

course, on the basic sectors of the economy: energy,

chemical industry and metallurgy. The concentration

of carbon dioxide in the air is increasing year by year.

Ministries of the environment and federal tax

authorities in many countries have been trying for

about a decade to resolve the issue of regulating

industries that bring the largest carbon footprint and

reducing this very footprint. For example, by 2025 the

European Union plans to introduce a so-called

"carbon" tax. It will be added to the cost of a

particular product (service), based on the carbon

footprint left by the production of this product. This

will “undermine” many industries that are simply

forced (due to their unfavorable location) to pay this

tax on the basis that electricity from unsustainable

power plants is involved in the production of their

goods or services. An example of such a situation is

aluminum, which is produced at the Irkutsk

Aluminum Plant. The participation of green

electricity reduces its cost for consumers from the EU

(the place where the carbon footprint tax will be

introduced), which will lower its cost and “pull”

producers with “dirty” energy from the market.

But some companies today do not need the so-

called "government kick" and are themselves trying

to reduce their carbon footprint. And such an example

is the notorious Google. Most recently, CEO Sundar

Pichai said that Google has completely neutralized its

carbon footprint from the company's inception. It is

worth noting that already in 2007 the company

managed to become carbon neutral, that is, by this

year they were able to reduce their carbon emissions

to zero and switch to absolutely environmentally

friendly technologies and energy sources. Cosmetics

giant L'Oreal has also taken the path of self-reducing

its carbon footprint. The company has launched a

afforestation program in Thailand in areas where rice

is grown for the company to produce rice oil.

According to Alexandra Palt, Sustainability Manager

at L'Oreal, the company has adjusted its production

processes by increasing the share of sustainable

supplies of renewable raw materials, bringing it to

100% already by this 2020, despite the pandemic and

the global crisis. For each raw material, L'Oreal

conducted a detailed analysis of the social and

environmental conditions of its production in order to

decide on the possible reduction and reorientation of

production, the introduction of new technologies in

these production facilities that would simultaneously

reduce the carbon and environmental footprint along

the entire supply chain, while while providing

additional environmental or social benefits to local

farmers and residents. An example is a water-saving

technology program for 1,500 Indian farmers who

supply L'Oreal with guar gum. But what can ordinary

people do to reduce their coal.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The road to the maximum reduction of greenhouse

gas emissions is a one-way road. Its ultimate goal of

a zero carbon footprint is to be achieved by 2050. The

exact date may change as we move along, including

due to unforeseen circumstances like the COVID-19

pandemic, but the world's largest economies are

determined to achieve it.

The oil and gas industry is an essential element

and participant in the process of achieving net-zero

greenhouse gas emissions. Measures to support

compliance with the goals of the Paris Agreement

will have elements of a carrot in the form of

concessional financing, but will mostly manifest

MMTGE 2022 - I International Conference "Methods, models, technologies for sustainable development: agroclimatic projects and carbon

neutrality", Kadyrov Chechen State University Chechen Republic, Grozny, st. Sher

286

themselves in the form of a stick - tax and tariff

measures. This will affect global competition in

energy-intensive industries and, above all, in the oil

and gas industry, but will not change the already

emerging trend towards energy transition and new

economic structures, where the role of the oil and gas

sector will inevitably decline (Nikoláeva, 2018).

Nevertheless, the oil and gas sector will remain

the most important industry for the coming decades,

so the most appropriate response of the global and

Russian energy industry to the challenges of climate

change would be to constantly improve energy

efficiency, prioritize the development of renewable

energy sources and invest in the latest technologies,

including energy conservation and capture and

storage technologies. CO2.

A particular problem for Russian oil and gas

enterprises may be the problem of melting permafrost

and the release of methane, a greenhouse gas with an

extremely high activity. If these risks materialize,

then the problem of tariff barriers and taxation of

hydrocarbons imported from Russia will seem like a

slight misunderstanding (Migunov, 2020).

So, now we can say with confidence that the

carbon footprint is definitely an important factor in

the production and consumption of certain goods

(services). The trend towards reducing the carbon

footprint will affect not only production technologies,

but also the market itself and competition between

manufacturers, bringing forward those who are really

taking steps to improve the environmental situation

on our planet.

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barer-chem-rossii-grozit-uglerodnyi-nalog-v-evrope.

Migunov Dmitry, 2022. Carbon farms are an opportunity to

help nature and make money on the fight against

greenhouse gases. https://carbon.1d.media.

Smirnova, V. E., Orleanskaya, E. S., 2012. Ecological

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