Scope 5’s International Electricity (IEA) Library includes emission factors published by the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the GHG Protocol.
As of March 2022, the Library contains a total of 155 electricity and 188 Transmission and Distribution resources. Please note that up until March 2020, the International Electricity Library was part of the GHG Protocol Resource Library. In February 2022, these resources were split from non-IEA sourced emission factors which are now found in the International Electricity (non IEA) Library.
Where the Numbers Come From
Country-level emission factors
The country-level emission factors have historically been sourced from the GHG Protocol. The GHG Protocol stopped publishing international electricity emission factor updates in 2015.
Consequently, the more recent emission factor sets have been sourced from the Emission Factors - 2020 edition, published by the IEA. This publication contains emission factor sets until 2018. Please note that this is paid access publication by the IEA and, as such, Scope 5 cannot share a direct link to the source data itself or allow the CSV download of the resource library.
Generally speaking, the country-level emission factors until 2012 are sourced from the GHG Protocol, while from 2013 on, the IEA is the main data source.
To identify the source of a specific set of emissions factors in Scope 5, please refer to the ‘Source’ for the specific conversion factor set, as illustrated in the following example.
Fuel and energy related activities emission factors
The International Electricity Library 188 Transmission & Distribution Losses Adjustment factors sourced from the IEA. These factors serve to quantify organization's Scope 3 Category 3 (Fuel- and Energy-Related Activities Not Included in Scope 1 or Scope 2), Activity C emissions according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's Scope 3 standard.
Updates
Scope 5’s conversion factors are current through the IEA’s 2022 and the GHG Protocol’s 2014 updates.
Global Warming Potentials (GWPs)
The IEA publishes its CH4 and N2O figures in terms of CO2e, using the IPCC’s AR4 Global Warming Potentials.
However, following the Greenhouse Gas Protocol recommendation, Scope 5’s International Electricity library uses GWPs from the IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report (AR5).
The Scope 5 team is always available to help, whether that means navigating the application, making changes to your account configuration or just answering questions.
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