Synonyms
Definition/Description
Carbon emissions describe the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) by human activities such as the combustion of fossil fuels, steel and cement production, deforestation, and land-use change. The combustion of biofuels is not included in the inventories of CO2 emissions of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the European Union (EU), since it is assumed that this process does not cause net CO2 emissions (IEA 2016; Janssen-Mahout et al. 2017).
Introduction
Carbon dioxide is a natural component of air. Biological and geological activities release CO2 which is then absorbed in closed and balanced cycles – the biological and the geological carbon cycle (Sundquist 1985). Additional CO2 is released by human activities of which the combustion of fossil fuels is the most important (IEA 2016). These emissions are not completely absorbed in carbon sinks as, for example, forests, but either remain in the air or are...
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References
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Buder, I. (2020). Carbon Emissions. In: Idowu, S., Schmidpeter, R., Capaldi, N., Zu, L., Del Baldo, M., Abreu, R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sustainable Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-02006-4_301-1
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