Abstract This paper introduces new environmental constraints, namely carbon emission constraints, in multi-sourcing lot-sizing problems. These constraints aim at limiting the carbon emission per unit of product supplied with different modes. A mode corresponds to the combination of a production facility and a transportation mode and is characterized by its economical costs and its unitary carbon emission. Four types of constraints are proposed and analyzed in the single-item uncapacitated lot-sizing problem. The periodic case is shown to be polynomially solvable, while the cumulative, global and rolling cases are NP -hard. Perspectives to extend this work are discussed.