A carbon footprint considers the emissions arising from all stages of an electricity generation facility, from construction through to decommissioning and waste disposal, including fuel and other materials consumed in operation. Carbon footprints are calculated by the method of “Life Cycle Assessment”. POSTnote 268 (PDF 163 KB) (October 2006) investigated the carbon footprint of a variety of energy technologies including nuclear generation and has resulted in a large amount of interest and many inquiries to POST – probably more than any other POSTnote. At the time of the underlying research, however, only a limited number of public studies were available for some technologies.This POSTnote update will focus on figures from recent research.