Cozero is a climate action platform which enables companies to effectively decarbonize and transform their business. It is a multi-module solution allowing companies to track, analyze, act, and share their carbon emissions progress.

Climate change refers to large-scale shifts in the climate being driven by human activities Climate change refers to large-scale shifts in the climate being driven by human activities that release carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. These changes in the climate are impacting society in several ways such as an increase in extreme weather, greater frequency and severity of wildfires, and increase in food and water insecurity. The term “climate change” in general audiences refers to the human-made climate changes and is often used interchangeably. Further information about climate change can be found in the Climate Change article.

GHG emissions stand for greenhouse gas emissions, these are gases which trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to global warming and climate change. These are sometimes referred to as “carbon emissions”. In reality, carbon dioxide (CO₂) is the most commonly emitted GHG, but there are six main others: Methane (CH₄), Nitrous oxide (N₂O), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs), Sulphur hexafluoride (SF₆), Nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃).

Different GHGs have different levels of “Global Warming Potential” (GWP). In order to add the impact of these emissions together, they are converted into a standard metric called “Carbon dioxide equivalent” or CO₂e, for short.

A carbon footprint measures the GHG emissions from all the activities across an organization or for a specific product or service. There are two main types of carbon footprint: product (PCF) or company carbon footprint (CCF). Carbon footprints enable you to identify and quantify your key emissions sources. This helps pinpoint the opportunities to reduce carbon emissions within your organization, allowing you to monitor and manage carbon emissions by setting emissions reduction targets and measuring your progress.

The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol’s mission is to develop internationally-accepted GHG accounting and reporting standards for organizations to measure their GHG emissions in a standardized manner. The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard is internationally recognized as the go-to standard for estimating and reporting corporate GHG emissions, providing requirements and guidance for the calculation and estimation.

GHG accounting has an accepted set of principles, in the same way financial accounting does. This is for companies preparing a corporate-level GHG emissions inventory. These principles are relevance, completeness, consistency, transparency and accuracy. It splits emissions into Scope 1-3 and Cozero aligns to this.

The GHG Protocol splits out emissions to scopes, defined as the following:

Cozero does not currently provide a carbon neutral label or offsetting solutions, however as long as you are transparent about your CO₂ footprint calculated in Cozero and you offset that quantity, you may communicate that you are carbon neutral. We can additionally connect you with our communications team in case you would like to use Cozero's name in this context.

Decarbonization is the reduction or complete avoidance of CO₂ emitted into the atmosphere. This can be achieved, for example, by switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources.

Offsetting, or climate compensation, means to offset CO₂ emissions. This compensation is created by reducing CO₂ emissions elsewhere. Reforestation is a common example of an offsetting measure.

Offsetting only really compensates for your carbon emissions if the carbon captured with it is never released back into the atmosphere. By decarbonizing you ensure that you don’t emit GHG into the atmosphere in the first place. In the long-term it is therefore necessary to decarbonize as offsetting is often a shorter term solution.

The Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) is the analysis and measurement of greenhouse gas emissions associated with a product or product line. The Corporate Carbon Footprint (CCF) measures the emissions generated by the activities of an entire organization.

Depending on which Carbon Footprint is calculated, generated emissions are categorized differently. Scope 3 emissions play a large role here, especially for manufacturing companies, as most emissions are generated from the purchase of materials and/or energy consumption. This is where the PCF helps to determine exactly what the biggest GHG emitters are and how best to address them. Eventually, this also helps to determine the CCF as accurately as possible.

In general we differentiate between biogenic emissions and fossil emissions. Biogenic emissions are stored in biological materials. The emissions released from burning biomass belong to the natural carbon cycle and can be considered part of the natural emission of carbon.

Fossil emissions are emitted when fossil fuels are burned. They release carbon that has been locked up in the ground for millions of years and thus increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

It is important to calculate biogenic emissions separately in order to assess the impact of biogenic materials and products and evaluate how much additional burden emissions put onto the atmosphere.