Trace’s emissions engine covers:
- Scope 1: Direct emissions (e.g. fuel used by facilities and vehicles)
- Scope 2: Indirect emissions (purchased electricity)
- Scope 3: All other indirect emissions not covered by Scope 2 (e.g. purchased goods and services, business travel, commuting & WFH, waste etc)
The GHG Protocol (the global best-practice framework for carbon accounting, to which Trace aligns), defines different formulae to calculate the emissions in each emissions category, according to the input data available. The underlying calculation is simple:
Trace’s carbon calculation engine applies the recommended formula according to the data provided by the reporting company - generally a combination of spend and activity data.
For Scope 3 emissions, we adopt a hybrid approach to carbon accounting that allows our customers to input spend and activity data according to what data sources are available across their value chain.
Each data point corresponds with an emissions factor depending on the unit of data provided:
- Spend based emissions factors represent the quantity of CO2 emissions associated with a single unit of financial expenditure (e.g. CO2e / $)
- Activity based emissions factors represent the quantity of CO2 emissions released for a single unit of an activity (e.g. CO2e/kwh of electricity, or CO2e/km travelled)
This multiplication process is repeated for all goods, services, and activities within an organisation’s operations and value chain. The sum of all of these values represents your total carbon footprint.