It comes from two databases: Ecoinvent (life cycle analysis data) and Exiobase (economic data). Information from these databases tells us how industries tend to spend money across other industries. We scale those spending predictions down to the firm level and apply emissions factors to generate an estimate of your carbon inventory.

For example, the plastics industry in China might purchase nuclear power in Russia so that's why it's showing up in your Scope 3.1 (energy) estimate at one of your manufacturing facilities. We know these estimates may not be perfectly true to your actual operations but we are confident in the emissions totals that are generated by these estimates. Relying on estimates is a conservative way to measure your emissions in areas of your inventory where you may not have actual data to refine with. Year over year, we encourage you to refine in all scopes and categories.