A Review of the Research on Carbon Footprint Responding to Climate Change

The problem of global warming,caused by greenhouse gases,has aroused increasing attention from the international community.With the increasing concerns on global warming,carbon footprint analysis has become a new method for assessing regional greenhouse gas emissions and has been widely applied by academia.This paper first presents the origin and the different definitions on carbon footprint, clearly clarifies the concept of carbon footprint and then explores different categorization approaches on carbon footprint.The main focus of this paper is to introduce different calculation methods on carbon footprint analysis,including life cycle assessment,input-output analysis,the IPCC method and carbon footprint calculator.Advantages and disadvantages of the four calculation methods are also summarized and compared.On the basis of this,we review the current research progress at home and abroad and identify the key issues.We also introduce four main evaluation standards on carbon footprint: the British Standard PAS 2050:2008,the Greenhouse Gas Protocol made by World Business Council for Sustainable Development and World Resource Institute,the Japanes standard TS Q 0010,and ISO 14067.Besides,the important premise of how to solve the boundary problem on carbon footprint evaluation is recognized based upon both GHG Protocal standard and PAS 2050 standard.We finally present the future research perspectives on carbon footprint analysis.