Category 11: Use of sold products
This category includes emissions from the use of goods and services sold by the reporting company.
Emissions from the use of sold products are of two types:
Direct use-phase emissions : These are emissions from;
Products that directly consume energy (fuel or electricity) during use. Examples include automobiles, aircrafts, engines, motors, power plants, buildings, appliances, electronics, lighting, data centers, and web-based software.
Fuels and feedstocks e.g. petroleum products, natural gas, coal, biofuels, and crude oil.
Greenhouse gases and products that contain or form greenhouse gases that are emitted during use. Examples include CO2, CH4, N2O, HFCs, PFCs, SF6, refrigeration and air conditioning equipment, industrial gases, fire extinguishers,and fertilizers.
Indirect use-phase emissions : These are emissions from products that indirectly consume energy (fuels or electricity) during use. Examples include apparel (which require washing and drying), food (which requires cooking and refrigeration), pots and pans (which require heating), and soaps and detergents (which require heated water).
This category includes the total expected lifetime emissions from all relevant products sold in the reporting year across the company’s product portfolio. This way, the scope 3 inventory accounts for a company’s total GHG emissions associated with its activities in the reporting year. Companies may optionally include emissions associated with maintenance of sold products during use.
A reporting company’s scope 3 emissions from the use of sold products include scope 1 and scope 2 emissions of end users. End users include both consumers and business customers that use the final products.
Calculating emissions from this category typically requires product design specifications and making assumptions about how consumers use products e.g. used profiles and assumed product lifetimes. Companies are encouraged to additionally report additional information on product performance when reporting scope 3 emissions to provide additional transparency on the steps they are taking to reduce GHG emissions of their products. Examples of this information include GHG intensity metrics, energy intensity metrics and annual emissions from the use of sold products. GHG intensity metrics measure the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced per unit of output e.g kg CO2e per washing machine or kg CO2e per kWh of electricity used. Energy intensity metrics measure the amount of energy consumed per unit of output e.g. kWh per washing machine produced, kWh per washing cycle, kWh per ton-km of freight transported, etc.
The method to use in calculating emissions from the use of sold products depends on the type of emissions generated by the product.
1) Direct use-phase emissions
1a) Products that directly consume energy.
In this method, the company multiplies the expected lifetime number of uses for each product by the number of items sold. The result is then multiplied by the amount of energy consumed (fuel or electricity) and the emission factors corresponding to the energy type.
The activity data needed here includes the total lifetime expected uses of the product, the number of items sold, the amount of fuel and/or electricity consumed, and refrigerant leakage per use of the product. This data can be obtained from internal data systems, sales records, surveys or industry associations. Consequently, the company needs to collect the respective emission factors for each fuel type as well as refrigerant leaks. These emission factors can be obtained from the GHG Protocol website, lifecycle databases, other companies, suppliers or industry associations.
Since electricity grid emission factors vary by region, it is crucial to consider the region where products are used. A company that sells their products globally can use global average emission factors in this exercise. The downside is that the results obtained would be less accurate than if the company used emissions factors at a more granular level (e.g national or regional).
The formula used to calculate these emissions is given below.
The image below shows how this formula can be applied.
1b) Fuels and feedstocks
Feedstocks are initial material that are used to make fuels, power and/or products. Examples include biomass for producing power, crops for producing biofuels, or crude oil for producing plastic products. A company that produces fuels and/or feedstocks should calculate emissions by multiplying their quantities by combustion emission factors. If feedstock is not combusted during the use phase, emissions should not be calculated.
The formula for calculating emissions from the use of fuels and feedstocks is shown below.
1c) Greenhouse gases and products that contain or form greenhouse gases that are emitted during use.
If the reporting company produces products that contain GHGs that are emitted during use or at the product’s useful life (e.g products that contain refrigerants), they should calculate emissions by multiplying the quantities of products sold by the percentage of GHGs released per unit of GHG contained in the product. The result should then be multiplied by the global warming potential (GWP) of the greenhouse gases released since emissions need to be expressed in carbon equivalent.
To do this, the company needs to obtain data on the total quantities of products sold, the quantities of GHGs contained per product, the percentage of GHGs released throughout the lifetime of the product and GWPs of the GHGs contained in the product.
These emissions can be calculated as follows:
2) Indirect use-phase emissions
2a) Products that indirectly consume energy (fuels or electricity) during use.
The reporting company should calculate emissions for each of these products by creating use-phase profiles over the lifetime of the product and multiplying them by relevant emission factors. It is crucial to develop these use phase profiles since the same product may consume more or less energy depending on the conditions in which it is used.
To do this, they need data on the average number of uses over the lifetime of the product, the average number of use cases, fuel and electricity consumed for each use case, refrigerant leakage and GHGs emitted indirectly in each use case. The emission factors needed are combustion emission factors of fuels and electricity. These emission factors should be representative of the geography of where the product is sold as well as the reporting year.
The info graphics below demonstrate how emissions from this category can be calculated.
2b) Sold intermediate products
Companies are also required to account for emissions generated from the use of sold intermediate products.
To calculate these emissions, they should gather data on the types of final products made from sold intermediate products, the share of intermediate product sales going to each final product type, and the data required for use-phase emissions calculations. The necessary emission factors depend on the final product type. If the end use of sold intermediate products is unclear, companies may omit these emissions from their reporting.
Emissions from the use of sold intermediate products can be calculated as follows:
