The 2050 Climate Trajectory calls for the mobilisation of all : individuals, companies, banks, associations, public authorities… One condition is that everyone should know the carbon emissions associated with each purchase or investment decision : for this to happen, the precise and reliable weight of its carbon footprint must appear on the label and invoice of each product alongside the price.

Calculating these weights is currently too complicated and very imprecise : the non-partisan initiative Carbon on invoices makes the calculation more reliable and radically simplifies it, thanks to the electronic invoice and the accountants.

How does it work?

• • The electronic invoice, which is currently being generalised, transmits the weight of a product (its upstream scope 3) from one company to another, along the production and distribution chain.
  • Producers of primary carbons (hydrocarbons, livestock, etc.) indicate them (with their downstream scope 3) : these are the only carbons injected into the economy.
  • The company’s accountant adds up the weights of the suppliers’ invoices and breaks them down into the products sold on the invoices to customers : the system feeds itself to the final buyer.
  • Importers must also provide the footprint of foreign products, either through an agreed assessment or a customs scale derived from ADEME databases. 

Carbon on invoices change everything for the climate trajectory.

• • Individuals can put their service providers, large institutions and their own climate contribution in competition with each other.
  • Companies get with much less effort information to optimise and valorise their climate trajectory. They are better protected from « brown » non-European products.
  • Accountants get a new and extremely rewarding responsibility. But it is essential that the community helps small companies (which currently have no climate obligation) to take on this additional accounting service.
  • Finance gains a simple and reliable tool for channelling finance towards the climate transition and for valuing their own climate contribution.
  • Political authorities gain a precise measure (which makes other tools less necessary or more effective : incentives, taxes, regulations, etc.) and which is not socially divisive (the incentives weigh on the strongest people and institutions). 

The community around the website carbones-factures.org brings together people and institutions who want to push this initiative of collective interest.