The ISO 14067 CO2-based comparison unit used to express different greenhouse gases on a common basis.
Carbon dioxide equivalent is the CO2-based comparison unit that lets different greenhouse gases be expressed on a common basis. It is not a measured gas stream; it is the result of applying comparison logic such as GWP to gas-specific quantities.
This page follows ISO 14067:2018 product carbon-footprint vocabulary. CO2e values depend on the gases included, the conversion metric, and the calculation method used by the study.
ISO 14067:2018 - Greenhouse gases — Carbon footprint of products
unit for comparing the radiative forcing of a GHG (3.1.2.1) to that of carbon dioxide
Reference: 3.1.2.2
This term originates in ISO 14067:2018 and/or ISO 14044 LCA methodology. It is used in EU product regulation — particularly under the EU Battery Regulation (PEF method for carbon footprint) and ESPR (environmental footprint) — because both regulations require lifecycle-based quantification of environmental impacts. Practitioners applying these regulations should be familiar with these LCA/PEF concepts to correctly scope, conduct, and verify product-level environmental assessments.
Implementation records should capture the CO2e value, gas-specific quantity, GWP reference, calculation method, time horizon, source dataset, product-system link, and reporting unit.
Carbon dioxide equivalent is a comparison-unit control: the evidence consequence is that multi-gas climate data can be normalized without hiding the gas-specific quantities and assumptions behind the result.