CO2

Background information

The Carbon Footprint is a way to make a carbon accounting: what is the effect of a company’s activities with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. To calculate a Carbon Footprint, the emissions of CO₂ and other greenhouse gasses are taken into account in CO₂ equivalent numbers.

Scopes

The Carbon Footprint consists of three parts, called Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3. Each scope covers another part of the company’s activities.

Scope 1 emissions include direct emissions that occur from sources that are owned or controlled by the reporting entity. This typically includes emissions from sources such as fuel combustion in owned or controlled facilities, emissions from company-owned vehicles, and fugitive emissions from processes.

In the context of climate reporting, understanding Scope 1 emissions is crucial for organizations to assess their direct impact on climate change and to develop strategies for emission reduction. By identifying and quantifying Scope 1 emissions, companies can establish baseline data to track progress over time, set reduction targets, and implement measures to mitigate their environmental impact.

Scope 2 emissions are indirect GHG emissions associated with the purchase of electricity, steam, heat, or cooling.

Although scope 2 emissions physically occur at the facility where they are generated, they are accounted for in an organization’s GHG inventory because they are a result of the organization’s energy use.

Scope 3 includes all CO₂ emission related to upstream and downstream activities. This contains outsourced activities, carbon emissions of supplier’s and customer’s related activities, emissions related to the extraction of the raw materials etc.

In a typical carbon footprint, Scope 3 is the largest part. This is however the part where companies do not have a direct impact. They do have a direct impact on their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. The reduction of these scopes can be achieved by

• Saving energy (fossil fuels and electricity)

• Replacing grey electricity by green energy

• Investing in own production of renewable energy (PV panels or wind turbines)

Management of Scope 3 CO₂ emissions is therefore not part of the Enelyzer platform.

Reporting Your Carbon Footprint

Enelyzer allows you to calculate, visualize, and report your organization’s carbon footprint efficiently.

Below is an overview of how this works, including a brief explanations of all relevant submenus.

1. Define CO₂ Inputs → Select the tags to include in the reporting and assign each one an appropriate emission factor. Optionally, you can

2. Calculations → Emissions are calculated automatically once per evening. The system does not provide real-time updates. To update the calculations immediately, you can trigger a manual recalculation by generating a new CO₂ report or by forcing the calculation in the Reports section.

3. View results

   1. In 'Emissions' tabular overview → analyse, validate and export.

   2. Generate 'Reports' → Create formal reports of your carbon footprint, and save or lock them for record-keeping and compliance purposes.

   3. Visualise in 'Dashboards' → Dashboards can be created on demand to gain insights, monitor trends, and compare emissions across tags, activities, or time periods.

By following this workflow, you ensure that all emissions are captured, calculated, and reported accurately, providing a clear and auditable carbon footprint for your organization.

CO₂ emissions are typically calculated at the facility or building level. However, if you want to analyse CO₂ emissions per output (e.g., per production unit), you can use activity-based reporting. In Enelyzer, both facility/building-level totals and activity-based values are available for reporting.

STATIONARY COMBUSTION	Activity 1: baking	Activity 2: drying
Factory in Brussels	Here you put all stationary combustion tags from the factory, related to the baking activity and needed for the CO2. Example: the gas consumption tag of the oven used for baking in Brussels	Here you put all stationary combustion tags from the factory, related to the drying activity and needed for the CO2. Example: the fuel consumption tag of the dryer used for the drying activity in Brussels
Offices in Paris	Here you put all stationary combustion tags from the office building, related to the baking activity and needed for the CO2. Example: gas consumption tag of the heating installation of the offices	Here you put all stationary combustion tags from the office building, related to the drying activity and needed for the CO2. Example: gas consumption tag of the heating installation of the offices

Market-based versus location-based reporting

Enelyzer supports reporting your organization’s carbon footprint using both market-based and location-based methods for electricity.

• Location-Based Method:

  • Does not account for instruments or contracts.

  • Assigns the local grid average emission factor (or the location-based value of the selected emission factor) to all offsite electricity usage, regardless of the actual source.

• Market-Based Method:

  • Allows organizations to calculate emissions using provider-specific factors from their electricity supplier, based on the type of electricity purchased.

  • For example:

    • Green electricity: Emissions are considered 0.

    • Grey electricity: Emissions are calculated by multiplying consumption with the market-based value of the selected emission factor.