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Reducing your carbon footprint starts with understanding it. For small businesses, carbon footprinting might seem complex or time-consuming—but with the right approach, it becomes a powerful tool to improve both environmental and economic performance.

This step-by-step guide walks you through how to assess, calculate, and manage your carbon footprint as a small business.

As the ecological transition becomes a central issue for all businesses, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Eastern Europe often struggle to take the first steps toward climate action. They are held back by a lack of resources, internal expertise, and the complexity of emerging standards. Yet, the carbon footprint of SMEs represents a significant share of regional emissions. So how can carbon audits be made accessible to these agile but often under-resourced structures?

Is This Climate Change Like Any Other?

As mentioned in the introduction, the Earth has warmed by an average of 1.5 degrees compared to the period 1850-1900. However, it has been demonstrated that, throughout history, the average surface temperature of the globe has varied primarily based on the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

At the beginning of this year, we reflect on a significant event of 2024: for the first time, the global average temperature exceeded 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900). This symbolic threshold was previously considered the lower limit of the 2015 Paris Agreement and the most ambitious target for 2100. Although this exceedance does not yet mean that the climate has permanently crossed this threshold (a 20-year average would be required for that), this observation—just 10 years after COP 21—is alarming.

Hydrogen, the smallest chemical element, emerged shortly after the Big Bang and is abundant on Earth, where it is often bonded to other molecules, most notably oxygen in water. However, hydrogen in its gaseous form (dihydrogen), which is of interest for industrial applications, is extremely rare. Currently, only one small natural deposit is being exploited in Mali. In Europe, debates persist regarding the evaluation of hydrogen reserves within rock formations, and its environmental extraction and purification impacts remain uncertain. This natural form of hydrogen is referred to as « white hydrogen. »