17 What is the 12 in carbon. To obtain an entire valence shell carbon usually exchanges electrons with several other atoms creating bonds. Chem4kids Com Carbon Orbital And Bonding Info There is a point we should pay attention to here. . Carbon contains 4 electrons in its outer shell out of total of 6 electrons thus it has 4 valence electronsThe electronic configuration of Carbon is 2 4. Because if you check electron configuration for carbon you will see that last shell is 2s2 2p2 which means that carbon has 4 valence electrons. 15 Can carbon have more than 6 electrons. 24 How many electrons can shell 3. 5 StepsHow Many Valence Electrons Does Carbon HaveNumber of Valence. Carbon has 2 electrons in its first electron shell. The number of electrons in an electrically-neutral atom is the same as the number of protons in the nucleus. The atomic number of carbon is 6. So there are 2 shells in a carbon atom.