Managed Emission Factors - DEFRA

The UK Government and the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) publishes a comprehensive set of GHG emission factors covering Scope 1, 2 and some Scope 3 emission sources. This factor set applies mainly to the United Kingdom but many organizations have chosen to apply this factor set across their European sites, particularly with emissions resulting from air travel.

Envizi has managed this factor set since 2009. This factor set has been published consistently since it was originally created back in 2002. The factor set contains the 3 individual GHG gases for fossil fuel sources and CO2e for all other sources.

This factor set also provides a useful summary of changes every year with guidance. To review annual changes you can download the publication for each year by visiting the website.


Website	Government conversion factors for company reporting of greenhouse gas emissions
Upcoming publication date	Publishes annually every July. Upcoming publication date: July-2024
Geographical coverage	By default factors are applied to Europe for Scope 1 and 2. Global for Air travel and some other Scope 3 factors. Note, this factor set can be set as a global default to apply when other more localized factors do not exist. Contact Envizi Help Desk to arrange this.
Data type coverage	Publications exist for every year from 2002 to the present. Scope 1: fossil fuels, biofuels, refrigerants, passenger and delivery vehicles (distance based) Scope 2: UK electricity, UK electricity for electric vehicles, heat and steam Scope 3: upstream and downstream emissions resulting from Scope 1 and 2 emission sources and… water supply water treatment material use waste business travel - air, land and sea freighting goods hotel stays electricity from managed assets well-to-tank (upstream and downstream) emissions from Scope 3 activities Note that Envizi calculates well-to-tank emissions and these are visible in the Emissions Performance Dashboard and categorized as ‘lifecycle emissions’ in the grid. Lifecycle emissions can also be extracted using the Monthly Data Summary Report.
Effective and Published dates	Due to guidance provided within the factor set Envizi has set the factor effective period to be the same as the published period. This period is Jan - Dec. For more information on effective and published dates see this article. If you require a custom period for your factors this will need to be managed as custom factors. Guidance from the DEFRA factor set: You should use the version of the factors that correlates with the data on which you are reporting (for example, factors labelled as 2021 should be used for data from calendar year 2021).

Managed publications and effective periods

Factor Source reference	Effective From	Effective To	Published From	Published To
2010 Guidelines to Defra/DECCs GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting.		31 Dec 2010	same as effective	same as effective
2011 Guidelines to Defra/DECCs GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting.	01 Jan 2011	31 Dec 2011	same as effective	same as effective
2012 Guidelines to Defra/DECCs GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting.	01 Jan 2012	31 Dec 2012	same as effective	same as effective
2013 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2013	31 Dec 2013	same as effective	same as effective
2014 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2014	31 Dec 2014	same as effective	same as effective
2015 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2015	31 Dec 2015	same as effective	same as effective
2016 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2016	31 Dec 2016	same as effective	same as effective
2017 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2017	31 Dec 2017	same as effective	same as effective
2018 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2018	31 Dec 2018	same as effective	same as effective
2019 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2019	31 Dec 2019	same as effective	same as effective
2020 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2020	31 Dec 2020	same as effective	same as effective
2021 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2021	31 Dec 2021	same as effective	same as effective
2022 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2022	31 Dec 2022	same as effective	same as effective
2023 UK Government conversion factors for Company reporting.	01 Jan 2023		same as effective	same as effective

When a new set of factors are published, the previous years' publication will terminate on 31-December. Once the update is made in July or August, this will cause all data captured since the end January to be updated to use new factors.

While it is advised to follow the guidance provided in the DEFRA publication, if this is not preferable then you can use custom factors for the gap period between the end of the last publication and today.