Carrier's Gigaton Goal
Reducing the carbon footprint of our products in use and reducing the impact of food loss in our customers’ operations represent the biggest impact we can make to help address climate change. That’s why we’ve set an ambitious goal to help our customers avoid more than 1 gigaton of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
For definitional concepts and California website disclosures, click here.
Since 2020, our high-efficiency and lower GWP refrigerant products have enabled customers to avoid more than 490 million metric tons of GHG emissions, which is equal to the annual energy use of more than 65 million U.S. homes.
Investing over $4B to develop intelligent climate and energy solutions that reduce environmental impacts.
Delivering a portfolio of efficient products that optimize customer energy use and reduce GHG emissions, supporting net-zero ambitions.
Integrating energy management and digital solutions across our product portfolio to minimize GHG emissions while building grid resiliency.
Using lower global warming potential refrigerants1 to reduce the GHG emissions of our products while in use.
Designing products with materials that have lower embodied carbon.
through the adoption of our technologies that reduce food loss.
Progress against Carrier’s Gigaton Goal estimates avoided GHG emissions from the adoption of high-efficiency and lower GWP refrigerant¹ Carrier air conditioning, heating and refrigeration systems, energy services businesses and food loss, beginning in 2020 through 2030.
The model compares projected GHG emissions from available Carrier products to emissions from representative baseline products, with the difference representing the estimated avoided emissions. To provide a consistent reference point, the 2020 base year and baseline products remain the same, despite changes in Carrier's portfolio, the industry or otherwise. Avoided GHG emissions from high-efficiency and lower GWP refrigerant technologies are calculated by estimating the lifetime expected avoided emissions from products sold in the year of sale for each year reported. The model also incorporates energy savings as measured from energy service contracts. We intend to include additional Carrier products, services and businesses in these calculations as data becomes available.
The model also includes avoided net GHG emissions from food loss across the same time period. As global markets and infrastructure strengthen, so too does the ability to sustainably refrigerate food in these emerging markets. Referencing third-party research, Carrier estimates the amount of avoided food loss and its associated GHG emissions through the adoption of cold chain technologies. We account for the avoided GHG emissions within the year of sale only.
The Carrier Gigaton Goal methodology is proprietary to Carrier and is different from SBTi GHG inventory accounting practices. It is a separate measure to understand the climate impact from Carrier products over time.
Progress toward our Gigaton Goal includes the majority of products in Carrier’s global portfolio. Product baseline performance is set against industry and government standards.
The model includes the avoided GHG savings from our lower GWP refrigerant products. GHG emissions savings generated from Carrier’s energy services businesses are also captured in the model. The food loss model accounts for the reduction of food loss and associated GHG emissions resulting from the adoption of cold chain technologies in emerging economies.
Carrier annually measures and discloses progress against our Gigaton Goal using the methodology as described above applied to our product sales for the reporting year. The reported annual figure is a cumulative number, which tracks avoided GHG emissions starting with product sales in 2020 and through yearend 2030.
¹ Lower GWP refrigerants refers to refrigerants with a reduced GWP relative to prior models and/or alternatives. GWP is a measure of how much heat a greenhouse gas traps in the atmosphere over a specific time period relative to carbon dioxide.