Primary Factors – Value Chain Support

What are ‘Primary Emission Factors’?

Primary emissions factors enable you to convey the emissions associated with your goods and services. This information allows customers to incorporate a more accurate number representing the emissions associated with what they’ve purchased from you into their greenhouse gas (GHG) inventory.

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For example, this is what the maths would look like: Each smartphone you manufacture has 60kg of carbon emissions equivalent (C02-e). Your customer has just purchased 1,000 smartphones from you.

When the customer is preparing their GHG inventory and assessing the emissions associated with purchasing 1,000 smartphones from you, they’ll calculated it as:

1,000 smartphones x 60kg [You, the supplier’s primary emissions factor] = 60,000kg of C02-e

Not sure what these are? Visit ➡️ What are Emission Factors?

‘Primary Emission Factors’ is also known as ‘Supplier-Specific Emissions Factor’ or ‘Primary data from suppliers.’ This is the number your customer is asking for in the request.

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Don’t stress if you’re unable to provide a primary emissions factor, not many organisations are carbon accounting to a level where they can do that right now. If you are looking to calculate your primary emission factor or are unsure if the emissions assessment you’ve done can provide a primary emission factor, feel free to reach out to the Sumday team here.

How to Calculate 🧮

Complete your Baseline Assessment within Sumday (calculate your emissions for the period)

You will be able to find your total tCO2-e in the opening dashboard of the Assessments section of Sumday

Using your tCO2-e you can calculate your emissions factor using the following formula: Total tCO2-e for the period / Total Revenue for the period (in millions) = Emissions Intensity

Note: when providing this number to stakeholders its important to note the currency used in the calculation, as this may need to be adjusted if they have a different reporting currency.

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Don’t panic if you are having trouble calculating this, you can contact our support team at any time to help you with this calculation. We can also help you allocate emissions to calculate other factors like emissions per kilo or other units.

In Sumday

Once you’ve completed your emissions assessment in Sumday for Scope 1, 2, and 3, go to Finalisation tab within Assessments

Fill out the Revenue column to show your total financial revenue per period

The calculated emissions factor will be your emissions intensity factor using CO2e per $ of revenue. This is a useful tool to compare the relative emissions performance of organisations and as a starting point to calculate your primary emissions factor.

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Tip: We can walk you through this, just reach out here or get your accountant, sustainability or finance team involved.

Learn More

Course Modules 🎓

Check out the Sumday Academy courses for learning modules on Scope 1 emissions:

🧐 Carbon Accounting for Business Course: Chapter 7

🌱 Introduction to Carbon Accounting Course: Chapter 5 & 17

Standards Guidance 📑

Read GHG Protocol’s Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard Chapter 7