Emission Factors

At a time when the effects of climate change are becoming ever more noticeable, it is crucial to find ways to calculate the ecological footprint of a company (CCF) or a product (PCF) in order to create transparency and identify possible savings.

Accurately calculating the ecological footprint of a company or product can be an extensive undertaking. If a company opts for the activity-based quantification method, emission factors are needed to calculate total emissions.

The activity-based quantification method for calculating a company’s greenhouse gas emissions

Activity-based

Activity-based / physical carbon accounting captures direct and indirect greenhouse gas emissions and takes into account all industrial activities and processes that affect the Earth’s atmosphere.

For this, the company’s raw data is recorded. The type of data collected depends on the specific activities, but usually includes energy consumption, fuel consumption, purchased goods, production volumes or logistics processes.

This raw data, so-called “activities”, is then multiplied by emission factors to obtain the CO2e emissions of an activity.

What are emission factors?

Emission factors – the specific activity-based CO2 factors – are key metrics that enable a reliable estimate of the environmental impact of different materials, products, services and processes. The environmental impact is usually expressed as CO2 equivalent (CO2e) emitted per reference unit. The reference unit can be different quantities such as the weight, volume, distance or duration of an activity.

Telusio’s view

Emission factors are an indispensable instrument for measuring and assessing greenhouse gas emissions. In sustainability, they play a crucial role in developing more environmentally friendly practices and products. By applying them in Corporate Carbon Footprint and Product Carbon Footprint calculations, companies can quantify their environmental impact and take targeted measures to reduce their ecological footprint.

However, emission factors always represent the average value of a certain activity. It is therefore important to work with different databases and choose the most suitable emission factor in order to achieve the closest possible approximation until primary data is available.