Abatement
Decarbonization is the goal; abatement is the toolbox. Every heat pump installed, supplier switched, and process redesigned is an abatement measure — a concrete action that removes tonnes of CO₂e from a company’s future footprint.
And because those measures differ enormously in cost, abatement is as much a question of sequencing as of engineering: which tonnes to cut first, and at what price.
Abatement is the reduction or prevention of greenhouse-gas emissions at the source — efficiency, electrification, fuel switching. Measures are ranked by their marginal abatement cost, the cost per tonne of CO₂e avoided, and some cost less than nothing.
What abatement means
Abatement is the act of reducing or preventing greenhouse-gas emissions at the source. In carbon accounting it refers to the concrete measures — efficiency improvements, electrification, fuel switching, process change — that lower the emissions a company, sector, or economy would otherwise release.
Abatement is the operational content of decarbonization: where decarbonization names the outcome (a falling footprint), abatement names the individual actions that produce it. Each measure has two properties that decide how it is used — how much it can cut (its abatement potential) and what it costs per tonne (its marginal abatement cost). Together these turn a vague intention to “cut emissions” into an ordered, costed programme.
This page defines abatement and how measures are compared; the modelling of a full programme and the emissions figures come from the calculators this entry links to.
Marginal abatement cost and potential
The central tool for comparing abatement measures is the marginal abatement cost (MAC) — the net cost of avoiding one additional tonne of CO₂e with a given measure. Ranking measures by MAC produces a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC), which shows both how cheap each measure is and how much it can deliver. Crucially, some measures have a negative MAC: efficiency upgrades that save more in energy bills than they cost, so they pay for themselves while cutting emissions.
Potential and cost are two different lenses. The chart below shows the potential of an illustrative company’s measures — how many tonnes each can cut — while the worked example further down ranks the same measures by cost. A good programme reads both: potential tells you where the big tonnes are, cost tells you what order to tackle them in.
Illustrative annual abatement potential by measure for a single company.
Hard-to-abate emissions
Not every tonne can be abated with today’s technology at any reasonable cost. Emissions that lack a mature, affordable measure are hard to abate — chemically unavoidable process CO₂ from cement, agricultural methane, and long-haul aviation and shipping. On a MACC these sit at the far right, at high cost, or off the curve entirely.
What remains hard to abate at a company’s target year becomes its residual emissions, to be neutralised with permanent removals rather than abated. The boundary is not fixed, though: as technology matures and carbon prices rise, measures that were once too costly move onto the curve, and the hard-to-abate share shrinks over time.
Abatement vs offsetting
Abatement is often contrasted with offsetting, and the distinction is fundamental. Abatement reduces the emissions a company actually causes — it changes the physical footprint. A carbon offset pays for a reduction somewhere else while the company’s own emissions may be unchanged.
Credible climate strategy prioritises abatement: cut your own emissions as far as the MACC allows, and reserve offsets or removals for the residual that genuinely cannot be abated. Buying offsets in place of available abatement — especially cheap avoidance credits instead of a negative-cost efficiency measure — is the pattern regulators now treat as greenwashing.
Abatement in your GHG inventory
Abatement shows up in the greenhouse-gas inventory as a fall in the gross Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 emissions it is applied to, measured in tonnes of CO₂-equivalent on the IPCC AR6 GWP-100 basis — methane at 29.8 [GreenCalculus gwp.CH4_fossil.ar6_100 · IPCC AR6 WGI Ch 7 Table 7.SM.7 (2021) — AR6 GWP-100 · v2026.203], nitrous oxide at 273 [GreenCalculus gwp.N2O.ar6_100 · IPCC AR6 WGI Ch 7 Table 7.SM.7 (2021) — AR6 GWP-100]. Because a measure’s abatement is counted in CO₂e, cutting a tonne of methane or nitrous oxide delivers far more CO₂e abatement per tonne of gas than cutting CO₂ itself.
For most companies the largest abatement potential sits in Scope 3 — the value chain — which is also where measures are hardest to control directly, since they depend on suppliers. That mismatch between where the tonnes are and where the control is defines much of the difficulty of a real abatement programme.
Worked micro-example
The same company’s abatement measures, now ordered by marginal abatement cost (the order a MACC would put them in). A negative cost means the measure saves money overall.
| Measure | Marginal abatement cost (£/tCO₂e) | Annual potential (tCO₂e) |
|---|---|---|
| LED + efficiency | −45 | 8,000 |
| Heat pumps | +20 | 15,000 |
| On-site solar | +35 | 12,000 |
| Supplier switching (Scope 3) | +60 | 40,000 |
| Green hydrogen (process heat) | +180 | 6,000 |
The efficiency measure has a negative cost — it should be done first, because it cuts emissions and saves money. The measures then rise in cost, so the company works down the list until the cost per tonne exceeds what it is willing to pay (or its carbon price). The biggest single block of tonnes — supplier switching — sits mid-cost, which is why value-chain abatement usually cannot be left to last.
Common mistakes
- Confusing abatement with offsetting. Abatement reduces your own emissions; offsetting pays for reductions elsewhere. Only abatement changes the physical footprint.
- Ignoring negative-cost measures. Efficiency measures that pay for themselves are the cheapest tonnes available and should be captured first.
- Ranking on cost alone. A cheap measure with tiny potential moves the needle less than a mid-cost measure with huge potential — read cost and potential together.
- Treating hard-to-abate as never-abatable. The MACC shifts over time; measures too costly today can become viable as technology and carbon prices move.
- Leaving Scope 3 to last. Value-chain emissions usually hold the largest abatement potential, even though they are the hardest to control.
Build a marginal abatement cost curve and sequence your measures by cost and potential.
Frequently asked questions
Abatement is the reduction or prevention of greenhouse-gas emissions at the source — the concrete measures, such as efficiency, electrification, and fuel switching, that lower a footprint. It is the operational content of decarbonization: the individual actions that together produce a falling emissions trend.
Marginal abatement cost (MAC) is the net cost of avoiding one additional tonne of CO₂e with a particular measure. Ranking measures by MAC produces a marginal abatement cost curve (MACC), which shows how cheap each measure is and how much it can deliver. Some measures have a negative MAC — they save more than they cost.
Yes. Many efficiency measures — better insulation, LED lighting, motor upgrades — save more in energy costs over their life than they cost to install, giving a negative marginal abatement cost. These “no-regret” measures cut emissions and money at once, and are captured first on any sensible abatement programme.
Abatement reduces the emissions a company actually causes, changing its real footprint. Offsetting pays for a reduction elsewhere while the company’s own emissions may be unchanged. Credible strategy abates first — as far as the cost curve allows — and reserves offsets or removals for genuinely residual emissions.
Hard-to-abate emissions lack a mature, affordable reduction measure today — process CO₂ from cement, agricultural methane, and long-haul aviation and shipping. On a cost curve they sit at high cost or off it entirely, and what remains at the target year becomes residual emissions, to be neutralised with removals rather than abated.
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