Hi everyone
How to choose the appropriate emission factor for electricity: the response from Carbon+Alt+Delete is below.
Green electricity mix
You have a 100% zero emissions procurement contract, and it’s clear about the sourcing. Note that nuclear is zero-emissions in carbon accounting.
Residual mix (no green electricity contract)
Your contract is unclear about its sourcing, or it states explicitly to be non-green.
Country average
You are trying to represent an average user in a country, of which you have no idea if they are using green contract or not. You’d like to see the data averaged out with the % of people in that country who usually have a green electricity contract.
It is highly unlikely that you can use this in scope 2. Typically, this option should only be used in scope 3 situations where the contract type is completely unknown.
It has to be mentioned that every time you have a clear mix indicated on the contract, this information is preferred over the general averages from electricity emission factor databases.
Example:
For a given mix of 40% green, 35% fossil, 25% nuclear in BE
a) You convert this information into a custom EF with the data available on the invoice
or
b) You report 65% as Green electricity mix and 35% Residual mix (no green electricity contract)
Hello,
I saw this thread and I have a remark regarding the example (b).
According to me, this is wrong and should rather be 60% (FOS+NUC) as Residual mix and 40% as green electricity. Belgian’s residual mix (AIB) for the year 2023 contained 0 % renewable, 61,93% NUC, 38,07% FOS as is given in Table 2 of the AIB residual mix file
Using only the 35% residual mix would be an underestimation of the total scope 2 emissions, since the residual mix is already a combination of fossil and nuclear in Belgium’s case.
In this case I would suggest to go for a) and using the Ecoinvent emission factors for BE, electricity production.
Kind regards,
Thibaut
1 Like
Hi ThibaultD,
Thanks for your insight. If you know your energy mix, your approach would indeed be more accurate.
Besides that, in cases where the type of electricity contract is unknown (which happens from time to time), do you then default to using the residual mix rather than the country average mix? What do you usually do in such situations?
Kind regards
Jelte Liekens
Hi Jelte,
I would assume worst-case (Residual mix) if it is not known.
In the Scope 2 Guidance (p. 29) it is mentioned that
Consumers who do not make specified purchases or who do not have access to supplier data should use the residual mix emission factor to calculate their market-based total
Additionally, if it is a Flemish electricity contract, there is the possibility to utilize the Groencheck-tool by the VREG, which tells you per EAN whether or not the electricity is “green” based on the GOs (Guarantees of origin). I think this can even be considered more accurate than just checking the contract.
Kind regards
Thibaut
