Scope 1 and 2 Emissions from Energy and Fuel Data

Every factory, warehouse and office in a group already produces the raw material for its carbon footprint: electricity bills, diesel receipts for the generator, gas meter readings for the boiler, fuel cards for the trucks and service sheets for the air-conditioning. The hard part is not the arithmetic. It is getting complete, consistent and traceable energy and fuel data from every site, every month, in a form an auditor can follow.

This guide is for group EHS and sustainability teams in multinationals and large industrial groups. It explains what Scope 1 and Scope 2 cover under the GHG Protocol, which site records feed each one, how the calculation works, and how to organise the data across many sites. It is general information, not accounting or legal advice.

Why Scope 1 and 2 start with data you already have

The GHG Protocol Corporate Standard is the most widely used basis for company greenhouse gas inventories. It requires companies to account for and report Scope 1 and Scope 2 separately, at a minimum; Scope 3 (the value chain) is an optional reporting category under that standard. ISO 14064-1:2018 sets organisation-level principles and requirements for designing, managing, reporting and verifying a greenhouse gas inventory, and many groups use it alongside the GHG Protocol.

Because Scope 1 and 2 come from a company's own fuel use and purchased energy, they are usually the first numbers customers, lenders and sustainability frameworks ask for, and the first ones a verifier will test against invoices and meter readings.

Scope 1 and Scope 2 in plain words

Scope 1, direct emissions: emissions from sources owned or controlled by the company. Typical examples are combustion in owned or controlled boilers, furnaces, generators and vehicles, emissions from chemical processes in owned equipment, and leaks of refrigerants and other gases from equipment the company operates.
Scope 2, indirect emissions from energy: emissions from the generation of purchased or acquired electricity, steam, heat or cooling consumed by the company. The emissions happen at the power plant or heat plant, but they are caused by the company's consumption.

One boundary case comes up at almost every plant with its own generation. Under the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance, if a company produces and consumes its own electricity with no grid connection or exchange, there are no Scope 2 emissions for that electricity: the fuel burned in the generator is already counted in Scope 1. Electricity bought from the grid is Scope 2.

Where the numbers come from on a site

A practical inventory starts with a list of every emission source at every site and the record that proves its activity. A typical manufacturing site looks like this:

Source	Scope	Activity data	Evidence to keep
Grid electricity	Scope 2	kWh or MWh per month	Utility bills, sub-meter readings
Diesel generators	Scope 1	Litres of diesel	Fuel purchase invoices, tank dip and issue logs
Gas or oil-fired boilers and furnaces	Scope 1	Cubic metres of gas, litres or tonnes of fuel	Gas meter readings, supplier invoices
Company-owned or controlled vehicles and forklifts	Scope 1	Litres of fuel (or km, if fuel is not known)	Fuel cards, fleet logs
Air-conditioning, chillers, cold rooms, fire suppression	Scope 1	Kilograms of refrigerant or gas added and recovered	Service and refill records from contractors
Purchased steam, heat or cooling	Scope 2	MWh, GJ or tonnes of steam	Supplier invoices

The evidence column matters as much as the number. When a verifier samples a site and a month, someone has to produce the invoice or meter reading behind the figure, quickly.

The basic calculation

For each source, the core calculation is the same: activity data × emission factor = emissions. GHG Protocol training material shows Scope 2 as activity in MWh multiplied by an emission factor in tonnes of CO₂e per MWh. Fuels work the same way, with factors per litre, per cubic metre or per unit of energy.

An illustrative example (the factor below is invented for the arithmetic, not a real grid factor): a site uses 1,200 MWh of grid electricity in a year. If the grid factor you are required to use were 0.5 t CO₂e per MWh, location-based Scope 2 would be 1,200 × 0.5 = 600 t CO₂e. Always record which factor, which source and which year you used, next to the result.

Two habits prevent most errors: keep units with every number (kWh and MWh are the classic mix-up), and calculate per source and per site before adding anything together.

Location-based and market-based Scope 2

The 2015 Scope 2 Guidance, an amendment to the Corporate Standard, introduced two methods:

Location-based: uses average generation emission factors for the grid or region where the electricity is consumed, without reference to contracts.
Market-based: reflects the electricity a company has chosen to buy, using emission factors from contractual instruments such as energy attribute certificates, direct contracts and supplier-specific rates. Where no such data exists, the GHG Protocol FAQ points to a residual mix, and only then to grid-average factors.

Companies with operations in markets that provide product- or supplier-specific data shall report Scope 2 both ways and label each result by method. This is called dual reporting. If a site has no contractual instruments and you fall back to grid averages, the two totals are the same, and that is fine to report.

Contractual instruments must meet the Scope 2 Quality Criteria: among other things, they must convey GHG information, be an exclusive claim, be retired, match the inventory period and come from the same market as the consumption. For a group, that means keeping the certificate or contract with the site and period it covers, not in a separate folder at head office.

Refrigerants: the Scope 1 source most groups miss

Air-conditioning and refrigeration leaks are direct emissions, and many common refrigerants have very high global warming potentials. The US EPA's inventory guidance on direct fugitive emissions (December 2023) offers three methods. The simplest, a screening method, multiplies equipment charge by default factors and is meant only as a rough check. The recommended approaches are material balances:

Material balance, for organisations that keep their own refrigerant stock: emissions = (stock at start − stock at end) + purchases − sales and disposals + (equipment capacity at start − capacity at end).
Simplified material balance, for organisations that use contractors: emissions = (refrigerant charged into new equipment − capacity of new equipment) + refrigerant used for servicing + (capacity of retired equipment − refrigerant recovered from it).

Each refrigerant is calculated separately and converted to CO₂e with its global warming potential. In practice the method you can use depends on records: if service contractors do not report kilograms added and recovered per unit, put that in the contract now.

Choosing emission factors

Factors should come from a credible, documented source and be updated each reporting year. Common choices are national or grid-operator factors for electricity, supplier-specific factors where they exist, and published factor sets for fuels. The UK government's 2026 conversion factors, first published on 11 June 2026, are intended for UK organisations and international organisations reporting on their UK operations; the government notes they may be used for other purposes at the user's own risk. Whatever you choose, apply it consistently across sites and years, and write down the source and version.

Rolling it up across many sites

For a multinational or a large industrial group, the calculation is rarely the bottleneck. The rollup is. The same problems that break safety reporting break emissions reporting:

Different units and periods: one plant reports diesel in litres per month, another in tonnes per quarter.
Missing months: a generator log that was never sent in becomes a gap the verifier will find.
Unclear boundaries: leased sites, shared buildings and contractor vehicles need one group rule on whether they are in Scope 1, Scope 2 or out of the inventory.
No trail back to evidence: a group total in a spreadsheet that cannot be traced to a site, a month and an invoice is hard to verify. See safety software vs spreadsheets for the same problem in HSE data.

The fix is the same as for safety data in the ESG report: capture each reading once, at the site, with its unit, period and evidence, and let the group report add it up. If your sites run an ISO 14001 or ISO 50001 system, the energy and fuel records they already keep for those standards are the natural starting point.

What is changing in the GHG Protocol

The GHG Protocol is revising its Scope 2 Guidance. A public consultation ran from 20 October 2025 to 31 January 2026 and proposed, among other things, hourly matching and deliverability requirements for the market-based method and targeted changes to the location-based method. A summary of the feedback published on 29 July 2026 reported nearly 1,100 responses from 56 countries, with low overall support for hourly matching among companies and industry groups, and said further steps and any additional consultation will follow the GHG Protocol's standard development process. When it opened the consultation, the GHG Protocol said final publication was expected in 2027. Separately, a draft consolidated Corporate Standard is expected for public consultation in the second quarter of 2027.

Until a revised text is published, the 2015 Scope 2 Guidance is the published guidance. The practical advice does not change: collect monthly, metered, site-level data with evidence, because every proposed direction asks for more granular data, not less.

Checklist: energy and fuel data ready for Scope 1 and 2

#	Check
1	A source list for every site: grid electricity, generators, boilers, vehicles, refrigerant equipment, purchased steam, heat or cooling.
2	One group rule on organisational boundaries (owned, leased, shared sites) and which scope each source falls in.
3	Monthly readings per site, with fixed units for each source.
4	Invoices, meter photos or logs attached to each reading.
5	Refrigerant service contracts that report kilograms added and recovered per unit.
6	A documented emission factor set, with source and version, reviewed each year.
7	Contractual instruments (certificates, power contracts) kept with the site and period they cover, if you report market-based Scope 2.
8	Location-based and market-based Scope 2 reported side by side and labelled, where dual reporting applies.
9	Missing data and estimates flagged, with the estimation method recorded.
10	Group totals that drill back to site, month and evidence, with a history of who changed what.

Frequently asked questions

Is diesel for a backup generator Scope 1 or Scope 2?

If the company owns or controls the generator, the diesel it burns is Scope 1. Grid electricity the site buys is Scope 2. Electricity you generate and use yourself does not add Scope 2 emissions.

Do we have to report both location-based and market-based Scope 2?

Under the 2015 Scope 2 Guidance, companies with operations in markets that offer product- or supplier-specific data shall report both, labelled by method. Check also what your reporting framework or customers require.

Where do we get emission factors for our countries?

Use credible, documented sources such as national or grid-operator factors for electricity, supplier-specific data where available and published factor sets for fuels. Record the source and version, and apply them consistently.

Is Scope 3 required?

Under the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, Scope 3 is optional; Scope 1 and 2 are the minimum. Some frameworks and customers ask for Scope 3 as well.

How AccelSafety and AccelGreen help

AccelSafety already keeps sustainability records for every site in one organisational hierarchy: energy, water, wastewater, waste, air and chemicals, next to your safety data. AccelGreen, free with every AccelSafety account, tracks that environmental data all year with social and governance records and keeps each year's ESG report with the data behind it. Automatic Scope 1 and 2 emissions calculation is planned and not yet available, so today the value is in the data: every reading collected once, at the site, with access scoped to each user's part of the group, a full audit trail and dashboards that drill back to the source records.

See how it fits with ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and ESG reporting on our ISO and ESG software page. Accel migrates your last two years of records within 7 days of installation and looks after hosting, updates, training and support, with unlimited users. Book a demo to see it with a structure like yours.

General information, not accounting or legal advice. Check the current GHG Protocol texts and the requirements of the frameworks and customers you report to.

Scope 1 and 2 emissions from energy and fuel data