Senseible

We acquired another factory this year. Do we change our carbon base year?

Usually you recalculate the base year to include the acquired factory, as if you had owned it then, if the change is significant. The GHG Protocol treats acquisitions as structural changes, so the trend compares like with like. Set a significance threshold in your policy and apply it every time.

The steps

  1. Get the acquired unit's past energy and fuel records for the base year.
  2. Add its emissions to the base year total.
  3. Report the current year with the unit from the acquisition date.

If past data is missing

Estimate from production or energy bills and label it. Do not leave the base year unadjusted without saying so.

Selling a unit

The same rule runs in reverse: remove the sold unit from the base year.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel, electricity and production documents into dated, fingerprinted plant records, so the monthly intensity behind a figure can be traced to its source.

Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, GHG Protocol standards, ISO 14064-1, 14064-3 and 14067 (iso.org)

Last reviewed 2026-10-22.