View emission factor sets and add items

Continia Sustainability includes a range of default emission factor sets for you to choose from. These sets are made up of lists of factors that allow you to calculate the emissions produced by various activities or processes. Continia maintains the default emission factor sets, by adding details and discontinuing factors that become obsolete.

You have the flexibility to choose which emission factor sets are most suitable for your company. It’s possible that you will use a combination of different emission factor sets for different areas of your environmental accounting.

Lastly, manufacturers and primary producers may provide you with an emission factor specific to a product or process involved in your business activities. These specific emission factors allow you to calculate emissions more precisely. Of course, Continia Sustainability allows you to add these specific emission factors so that you can use them in combination with the broader sets provided to you by default.

Emission factor sets in Continia Sustainability consist of five levels.

• Sets, which include databases such as DEFRA, AIB or sets added by you
• Categories, such as business travel, electricity, or waste disposal
• Items, such as a type of vehicle, equipment or material
• Factors, which determine the calculation for a specified variation of each item (e.g., different unit of measures). For example, there are different factors for diesel vehicles and electric vehicles, and different factors for recycled waste or landfill waste.
• Detailed Emission Factors, which show the details of the publisher or source for the emission factor, and details the range of emission gases that comprise the CO2 equivalent emissions per unit.

View emission factor sets and categories

Navigate to the Emission Factor Sets page.

The Managed by Continia column specifies if each of the emission factor sets is a default set provided by Continia. Continia updates these sets with new versions as they become available.

Use the View action to open the Emission Factor Set Card.

These cards include information such as:

• Number of Versions, which allow you to view previously set up versions of the same set
• Categories that are included in the emission factor set, such as fuel or bioenergy
• Emission items, which allow you to view the specific items included in the set, and the factors set up for these items

View emission factors and items

Select the Number of Emissions Items to open the Emission Items list for a category.

Each item can have one or more Number of Factors, allowing flexibility for calculations that take into account different variables depending on the item.

For example:

• Vehicle items often include different factors for each fuel type
• Construction material items may include different factors for each material source

Select the Number of Factors to open the Emission Factors list for each item.

Then use the Detailed Emission Factors action to view the card for each factor.

Each card includes:

• An option to mark the factor as out of scope, which adds the factor to a filter that can exclude the data from sustainability reporting
• Total kg of CO2 equivalent per unit
• Data Source
• Overview of the contribution of different emissions gasses to the total CO2 equivalent

Scenario

Ester at Cronus needs to add a specific emission factor item for the company-provided laptops.

She needs to do these tasks:

• Create a new emission factor set and category
• Set up an item and emission factor for the laptops, using data provided by the manufacturer

Other resources

• Emission factor databases (Continia Docs article)
• What is the difference between market-based and location-based? (Continia Docs FAQ)
• Creating an emission factor set (Continia Docs article)