COequivalent

COequivalent refers to a unit of measurement used to express the potential for a greenhouse gas to contribute to global warming compared to carbon dioxide. It is often abbreviated as CO2eq or CO2e. The concept is used to standardize the impact of different greenhouse gases, which have varying global warming potentials (GWPs). Each greenhouse gas has a GWP that indicates how much heat a ton of that gas will trap over a specific time horizon, typically 100 years, relative to a ton of carbon dioxide.

For instance, methane (CH4) has a GWP of about 28-34 over 100 years, meaning one ton of methane is equivalent to 28-34 tons of carbon dioxide in terms of warming. Therefore, if a process emits one ton of methane and one ton of carbon dioxide, its total climate impact would be expressed as 29-35 tons of CO2eq. This allows for a single metric to compare and report the total greenhouse gas emissions from various sources, industries, and sectors, facilitating the understanding and management of climate change mitigation efforts. International bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) use CO2equivalent in their assessments to provide a unified measure of climate forcing.