Carbon Handprint
The positive climate impact created when a product, service, or organisation enables emission reductions beyond its own value chain — the beneficial counterpart to a carbon footprint.
What is Carbon Handprint?
While a carbon footprint measures the negative climate impact of an organisation, a carbon handprint quantifies the positive impact it enables for others. The concept was developed by researchers at VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Aalto University.
A carbon handprint arises when a product, technology, or service helps its users avoid or reduce emissions compared to a baseline scenario. For example, a video-conferencing platform creates a handprint by reducing business travel emissions for its users; an insulation manufacturer creates a handprint by reducing heating demand in buildings where its product is installed.
The handprint must exceed the footprint of producing and delivering the enabling product or service. To claim a handprint, the organisation must demonstrate that its solution causes a measurable, additional reduction in the user's emissions compared to the conventional alternative.
This concept is gaining traction in corporate sustainability strategies as companies seek to demonstrate positive impact beyond their own operations. It is particularly relevant for technology companies, service providers, and manufacturers of efficiency-improving products.
Practical Examples
A building insulation manufacturer calculates its carbon handprint by measuring the heating energy savings across all buildings using its products compared to buildings without insulation.
A renewable energy company quantifies its handprint by estimating the fossil fuel displacement achieved by its wind and solar installations over their operational lifetime.
A software company measures the avoided travel emissions from its remote collaboration platform by surveying users about meetings that replaced in-person travel.
How Climatise Helps
Climatise can help organisations quantify both their footprint and handprint. By tracking emissions avoided through your products and services alongside your operational emissions, you get a complete picture of your net climate impact.
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