Data accuracy and reliability

Official requirements in the Protocol

The most accurate, representative, and reliable data as possible must always be used.

For the Solution scenario: data representative of the finest granularity shall be preferred (user / customer specific level), and if this not possible, company-specific data (see the figure 5 below) are required. If data representative of the market average is used, it must be justified.

Emission factors can be obtained from reliable public or private sources (e.g., IPCC, DEFRA, ADEME, Ecoinvent, Agribalyse, etc.) but they must be adapted as much as possible to the local context and activity of the company. Monetary emission factors shall not be used. Although they are convenient because they allow organisations to estimate their emissions from financia information, their inherent lack of precision and important uncertainties are not compatible with these Protocol expectations.

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Precision of the calculations

[...] Contributing Entities should use the user-specific approach by default in their assessment.

Whenever data is not available for a given type of data and upon proper justification, the company-specific approach is to be preferred. With the same process, a Contributing Entity can use market averages when company-specific data is not available.

All choices shall be summarised and justified, per type of data, source (internal or external) or any relevant categories.

If a Contributing Entity is able to further improve the quality of a data point (e.g. switching from market average to company-specific due to improved operational processes), they can use the updated data in their future claims without foregoing their remaining validity period.

In terms of data accuracy, you should basically always try to use the most accurate data as possible which means that:

👉 you must use the user-specific approach by default

👉 if that's not possible (and only in this case), you must justify why and use company-specific data

👉 if that's not possible (and only in this case), you must justify why and use market average data

👉 you cannot use monetary emissions factors

Source: WBCSD Guidance on Avoided Emissions: Helping business drive innovations and scale solutions toward

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State which level of data accuracy you have used for the most critical data used (baseline & solution / activity & emission factors) *

Follow the explanations provided in the table above. You must use user-specific data and only if that's not possible, then go the next accuracy level.