Carbon management is the process of monitoring carbon emissions and implementing measures to cut the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in order to reduce global warming. It refers to the management of processes to measure, assess, and mitigate associated carbon emissions at different scales, from county level through to industry, business and individual. This can only be achieved through establishing a carbon management strategy.

Carbon management strategy

By tracking their carbon footprint, or the overall impact they have on the global climate in terms of the total amount of greenhouse gases produced, organizations will make noticeable environmental improvements. A carbon management strategy allows companies to identify areas for reduction in emissions and implement mitigation measures through energy efficiency and clean technologies or carbon capture and storage methods. 

An effective Carbon management strategy is multi-stage cyclic process that include the following steps

1. Measuring Carbon footprint: the development of a carbon management strategy starts with the calculations of carbon footprint. The ISO 14064 series provide guidance on emissions data collection and inventory quantification

2. Setting objectives: Setting objectives and targets for an organisation does require some level of analysis. It is important to adopt the SMART criteria approach and establish KPIs for performance evaluation 

3. Reducing emissions: Accounting for emissions help identify the most effective reduction opportunities. GHG mitigation projects should primarily consider energy conservation methods or energy efficiency and renewable resources technologies and if applicable, carbon sequestration and storage.  

4. Monitoring performance: monitoring progress towards environmental performance is a critical part of carbon management. It help a team stay on truck and focus onto the ultimate and make strategic changes if needed.

5. Offsetting emissions. After internal carbon reduction efforts have been implemented, an organization can still purchase carbon offsets to become for instance carbon neutral.

Carbon Trading vs Carbon Taxation

 At country level, carbon trading programs and carbon taxation are also emerging approaches used in different part of Word for carbon management. Carbon reductions can therefore be achieved through carbon offsets or credits in a cap and trade or cap and tax program. Investing in a reduction project in developing countries such as a renewable energy or energy efficiency projects are a common strategy for offsetting. Offsets are calculated relative to a baseline that represents a hypothetical scenario for what emissions would have been in the absence of the project.