In what order should an Indian company choose emission factors: supplier-specific, Indian national or IPCC default?

Use the most specific factor you can evidence: your own measured or supplier-specific data first, then an official Indian figure, then an IPCC default, then an international database. Spend-based factors come last. For grid power in India, the CEA factor is the national figure to use.

The order, from best to fallback

1. Measured or supplier-specific: your fuel lab report, a supplier's verified product footprint, a mill EPD, your PPA generator's data.
2. Indian official: the CEA CO2 Baseline Database for grid electricity, or a factor an Indian regulator publishes for your sector.
3. IPCC 2006 default for the fuel or process, named by table.
4. An international database or another country's government factor, where nothing Indian exists and the activity is similar.
5. Spend-based: rupees x a factor per rupee, labelled as an estimate with wide uncertainty.

How the order differs by scope

• Scope 1 fuels: IPCC defaults are fine for diesel, petrol, LPG and gas. Coal and biomass deserve your own calorific value data, because quality varies.
• Scope 2: location-based uses the CEA weighted average; market-based uses the instrument's own rate first, then the grid average where India has no residual mix.
• Scope 3: supplier-specific, then hybrid, then average data per kg or per tonne-km, then spend-based, the order set in the GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard.

When to skip a step

Move down the list when the better factor fails a quality test: wrong year, wrong boundary, no published method, or a value you cannot show an auditor. The Scope 3 Standard judges data on technology, time, geography, completeness and reliability. A supplier figure with no method is weaker than a well documented average.

Put the most effort into the sources that make up most of your total. The IPCC calls these key categories. Getting a coal factor right matters more than refining courier emissions.

Write the choice down

For each line, record the factor, unit, source, edition and why you chose it. Keep the same source for a line across years, or restate the base year when you switch.

Worked example: one factory, three lines

• Diesel for the DG set, 12,000 L: IPCC default 2.68 kg CO2/L, 12,000 x 2.68 = 32,160 kg CO2
• Grid power, 3,00,000 kWh: CEA 0.710 kg CO2/kWh, 3,00,000 x 0.710 = 2,13,000 kg CO2
• Bought aluminium, 20 t: supplier figure if it has a method; otherwise an average per tonne labelled with its source

What Senseible does here

Senseible uses the CEA factor (0.710 kg CO2 per kWh, version 21.0) for grid electricity and IPCC 2006 defaults for fuels, and shows the source on every line. Scope 3 lines go to a separate supplier evidence trail, and spend-based estimates are labelled as such.

• Are IPCC Tier 1 default factors enough?
• Emission factor selection guidance
• No emission factor for a material

Sources: 2006 IPCC Guidelines, Vol. 1 Ch. 2 and Ch. 4 (data choice, key categories), GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard (2011), Ch. 7 data quality, GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance (2015), factor hierarchy

Last reviewed 2026-10-18.