Emission Factors Database

Think of emission factors as the magic number that allows you to calculate your carbon emissions using the data you already have. They help quantify the impact of a given activity on the environment by providing a rate of GHG emissions. 🌍📈

Example:

You take $20M on Repairs and Maintenance x emissions factor (🪄) = 100t of C02-e You take 1000 kWh of electricity x emissions factor (🪄) = 170 kg C02-e

They are also often referred to as conversion factors, emission intensity, or carbon intensity.

Sumday has a database full of emissions factors to help you perform these calculations in the absence of primary data from suppliers.

Emissions factors are published by a variety of sources. For the most part Sumday uses publicly available emissions factor data published by reputable sources like governments, international organisations, universities, peer reviewed journal articles and primary emissions data disclosed by companies. We do this so we can transparently share every one of these numbers and their source with you in the Carbon General Ledger report.

Companies and their accountants are not limited to the use of data within the Sumday database. Where organisations have licensed other data sources or have their own organisational specific emissions factors, these can be uploaded as custom emissions factors in Sumday and will only be available to your organisation.

This is a great question. For the most part, emission factors come from studies or economic analysis to produce a very high level average for the carbon associated with your relevant activity or the goods and services you’re purchasing. This may seem extremely uncertain (it is) and yet every company in the world measuring their scope 3 emissions relies on methods that adopt these industry averages because they don’t have actual data from suppliers (Sumday is on a mission to change that by allowing your clients to request and collect actual data from their vendors or portfolio).

Emission Factors do not tell you the actual emissions of your chosen supplier or investments. You want to engage with these companies to improve the quality of your accounting over time and be rewarded for the emission reduction these companies achieve in your own scope 3 emissions.

Yes! If you or your client have preferred emissions factors you would like applied to your instance of Sumday then you can upload these when you set up your assessment in Sumday, or in settings up the top right at anytime during the assessment.