Carbon footprints are a familiar term for the climate emissions of something, whether that’s a person’s lifestyle or a business, or a product or event. It’s a term that is well understood in green circles and is recognised among the general public. Its popularity is due in part, let us not forget, to the PR efforts of the oil industry to put the focus on individuals rather than systems. That shouldn’t detract from its usefulness when used correctly. Understanding our climate impact is the first step to reducing it, and repeating the exercise allows us to track progress. I regularly help schools to calculate their carbon footprints for this reason.
On its own though, a carbon footprint doesn’t give us the whole story, and that’s why we need the complementary idea of a carbon handprint.
This is a considerably less familiar term. I heard someone use it for the first time last week, and it gives a name to what we already know: there’s a positive impact to our climate action as well as the damage from our emissions. Can’t we measure the good stuff as well? That’s what a carbon handprint aims to do, quantifying the carbon reduction that might be facilitated by something. Here’s how the climate accounting agency Neste summarise it:
To be clear about what it’s not, reducing your own carbon emissions just changes the size of your carbon footprint. Your carbon handprint is external to your own activities, and you want it to be as big as possible. For businesses, who are the most likely to use the term, different actions will contribute to one or the other. Imagine a washing machine factory. If they run their factory on renewable energy, they reduce their carbon footprint. If they research and produce a really efficient washing machine, they expand their handprint instead, as their customers will use less water and energy when they use it. This is what Panasonic are going for with their bold climate target of helping to reduce 1% of global emissions through their technology.
This positive side is often a missing piece in discussions around sustainability. I’m reminded of a deeply stupid moment in the documentary Planet of the Humans where an energy commentator argues that solar panels aren’t a green technology because coal is used in their production. That’s entirely likely, especially if the factories are located in a coal hungry country such as China. It might take a bucket of coal to make a solar panel, but that panel can then displace coal power for the next 25 years. The handprint of a solar panel compensates for its footprint hundreds of times over, but that’s invisible if you fixate on the footprint.
To put a more individual spin on it, sceptics like to point out the ‘hypocrisy’ of scientists and activists travelling to climate conferences, but if that conference helps to reduce emissions elsewhere, that’s hardly hypocrisy. The carbon handprint of those attendees or that event is missing from the debate.
Not every event would come out positive overall, of course, and having a large carbon handprint doesn’t excuse profligacy on carbon elsewhere. But it does help to keep things in perspective.
The carbon handprint has been around since at least 2013, mainly in academic and carbon accounting circles. It’s been developed in Finland and Germany, so it may be better known elsewhere. It doesn’t seem to have caught on and perhaps it never will – carbon footprints are already a bit of a metaphor salad, with footprints measures in tonnes of gas. I’m not convinced handprints could be reliably calculated or standardised in most situations, so they aren’t likely to be formalised and widely adopted any time soon. But if you’re looking for a shorthand way of describing the positive impact of something, the idea of a handprint might come in… handy.
The Earthbound Report 
Really helpful idea to be aware of – thanks!