ИСТИНА

A carbon footprint is currently one of the widely distributed methods for the assessment of an anthropogenic impact on environmental systems. Despite a quite long history of such estimations, there no any unified model for it’s calculation. Existing approaches include different components of man-made processes as sources of greenhouse gases emissions. On the example of a RUDN University (Moscow, Russia), the article presents the results of the application of different calculation methodologies. The use of these approaches gives a difference up to 2.5 times. At the same time, the greenhouse gases absorption is out of consideration. Thus, the relevance of the issues of carbon footprint assessment requires the development of detailed methods for assessing the role of urban ecosystems and the selection of adequate accounting algorithms for all activities of organizations considered as objects of analysis in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.