This page contains settings related to an organization's default emission factor assignments and emissions calculation methodology. Manage access to this page in user permission sets under Emissions > Settings.

Beware, changes made to these settings may trigger the re-calculation of your emissions. If you wish to save an existing report before updating your settings navigate to Building Emissions > Actions > Save report. Learn more

This setting is only visible if an organization has a non-standard fiscal year (fiscal year is set in Organization settings)

For organizations with a fiscal year that differs from the calendar year they can indicate whether the Reporting year is based off of a fiscal or calendar year.

The selected Reporting year controls the period an organization can assign emission factors. As a result, the year period displayed in Building emissions will always describe the reporting year selection.

The emission factor libraries that support our Standard Factors are updated regularly by the source publishers. Updates typically fall on an annual basis.

When new factors are released into Atrius a pop-up will display on the Home page for permitted users. Use the link to navigate to Emissions settings > New factors assignments to apply the new emission factors.

Note: Users can select the X to clear the window from the homepage for themselves, and can always navigate to Emissions settings to complete the desired actions.

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Use this modal to manage new factor releases and set the year in which you wish to apply the updated factors. New emission factors assignments only overwrite assignments in the same emission factor category.

Example: For the point type Average car,

Set Assign, and select the reporting years you wish to apply the factors. Upon save, any assignments in the year range, matching a previous version of the factor library will be overwritten by the newly released factors.

Building default factors will be assigned to your data points automatically if there is a factor available for the given point type.

See what defaults are set and edit your organization's default factors in Organization settings.

Building default factors are assigned to the building for a given point type. All of our default factors are assigned as building default factors and apply to any point that is added to the building. In the Building Emissions table, select the caret located on the right side of the table for any building row to edit this factor.

To assign and view point-level emission factors, click anywhere on the building row to expand, and view the points in that building. The only points that will display here are those that have been added to the emissions total. Select the caret for any point row to set a point-level emission factor. Any point-level factors will overrule a building-level factor for the specified point.

According to the EPA, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) was developed to allow comparisons of the global warming impacts of different gases. It measures how much energy the emissions of 1 ton of a gas will absorb over a given period of time, relative to the emissions of 1 ton of carbon dioxide (CO2), which allows us to come up with emission factors for carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e).

Atrius allows users to select from four of The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) most widely used reports which define GWPs, and to apply them to emissions data at the organization level. You can view or edit your organization's Global Warming Potential settings under Organization Settings.

For all emissions factors that are broken out into CO2, N2O, and CH4, we use the various GWPs to provide the emissions factors associated with four reports. If the emission factor source provided only CO2e emissions, then we are only able to provide the GWP in which the factor was given.

SAR, AR4, and AR5 reports support a single GWP for each greenhouse gas. CO2e emissions are calculated as follows:

Formula:

mt CO2 x GWP +

mt CH4 x GWP +

mt N2O x GWP

= mt CO2e

Ex. (10 mt CO2 x 1) + (10 mt CH4 x 25) + (10 mt N2O x 298) = 3,240 mt CO2e (AR4)

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) provides two GWPs for CH4, differentiating between methane emissions from fossil fuels vs. non-fossil fuels. When using AR6 GWPs the Fossil composition setting on a point's profile indicates how much of that point is derived from fossil fuel. CO2e emissions are calculated as follows:

Formula:

mt CO2 x GWP +

mt CH4 x (Fossil composition x fossil GWP) +

mt CH4 x (1-Fossil composition x non-fossil GWP) +

mt N2O x GWP

= mt CO2e (AR6)

Ex.

Where Fossil composition is 25%,

(10 mt CO2 x 1) + (10 mt CH4 x .25 x 29.8) + (10 mt CH4 x .75 x 27.0)+ (10 mt N2O x 273) = 3,017 mt CO2e (AR6)

The Fossil composition field is found on the point profile, and indicates how much of a point is derived from fossil fuel. According to the above methodology, CH4 emissions will be converted into CO2e according to the percent entered in this field. If any year in the Global Warming Potential setting is set to The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), the Fossil composition setting will appear on the point profile for all points across your organization.

By default, we've set this field to 0 for all points, indicating that the CH4 (non-fossil) GWP will be used in calculations. To better understand why we set this default, and learn more about fossil vs. non-fossil methane GWPs, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol has published a helpful resource here (see Methane GWP Instructions).