TUTORIAL

Immacolata Esposito

University of Naples Federico II, Italy

Reliable quantification of the environmental impact of products and services is increasingly required to support sustainability claims, comparative assessments, design choices, and policy decisions. Among the indicators used for this purpose, the Carbon Footprint plays a central role, as it expresses the climate-change-related impact associated with a product, service, or process, usually in terms of kg CO₂-equivalent. Although Carbon Footprint results are commonly obtained through structured calculation procedures and dedicated Life Cycle Assessment tools, their value depends on several methodological and data-related choices, including the definition of the object under analysis, the adopted system boundaries, the quality and representativeness of input data, and the assumptions used to describe production, use, and end-of-life scenarios. As a consequence, the resulting value should not be interpreted only as the output of a calculation, but as the result of a process whose reliability, comparability, and transparency require a proper measurement perspective.

This tutorial aims to show how Carbon Footprint Assessment can be framed according to the main principles of metrology. Starting from the definition of the measurand, participants will be guided through the key steps required to obtain meaningful and comparable environmental impact results. Particular attention will be given to the specification of the object under analysis, including the functional unit, system boundaries, geographical and temporal context, production and transport assumptions, use scenario, end-of-life conditions, and available knowledge about the structure of the product or service.

Practical examples will show how Life Cycle Assessment tools, such as openLCA, can support the modelling of life-cycle impacts, while platforms such as Electricity Maps can help account for operational impacts related to electricity consumption and to the geographical and temporal variability of the energy mix. Beyond the use of existing tools and datasets, the tutorial will emphasize the role of input data, assumptions, models, uncertainty sources, traceability of information, and result reporting. The final objective is to provide participants with a structured framework for interpreting Carbon Footprint results as measurement results, supporting more reliable, transparent, and critically interpretable environmental assessments.

Immacolata Esposito received her M.S. degree cum laude in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, in 2023. She is currently a third-year Ph.D. student in Information and Communication Technology for Health at the University of Naples Federico II, where she is part of the Electrical and Electronic Measurements research group. Her research activity focuses on measurements of sustainability and sustainability of measurement systems, to support the development of Industry 5.0 and Health 5.0 scenarios. Over the past three years, she has investigated how metrology can support sustainability by enhancing the reliability, transparency, and comparability of environmental impact assessments. Her research has focused on the measurement challenges associated with impact quantification, with particular attention to uncertainty evaluation and standardization issues. Her broader research interests lie at the intersection of metrology, sustainability, and emerging technologies, with applications ranging from Life Cycle Assessment and Carbon Footprint quantification to sustainable cyber-physical measurement systems. More recently, her work has also explored the environmental impact of artificial intelligence systems, with a particular focus on identifying and assessing trade-offs between system performance and environmental impact. Through her research, she aims to explore how metrology can strengthen sustainability assessments, making them more robust, interpretable, and suitable for supporting informed decisions.