How do I calculate the carbon footprint of a gold refinery per kilogram?

Add the refinery electricity at 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh and any LPG or gas for melting at its default factor, then divide by kilograms refined. That is the refining stage only; the origin of the gold, mined or recycled, is a separate part of the full footprint and must be added from the supplier.

What the refinery uses

• Induction or gas melting furnaces.
• Electrolytic or chemical refining steps.
• Fume scrubbing and ventilation.

Origin matters most

Mined gold carries the mining and processing footprint. Recycled gold carries mainly collection and refining. Keep origin evidence, such as refiner declarations, beside the figure.

Recycled claims

Only claim recycled content with documents that trace the feed. Mixed feed should be reported as mixed.

Worked example: refining energy per kg (one month, illustrative inputs)

• Electricity: 18,000 kWh x 0.710 = 12,780 kg CO2
• LPG: 900 kg x 2.98 = 2,682 kg CO2
• Kilograms of gold refined: 450
• Total: 15,462 / 450 = 34.4 kg CO2 per kg refined
• Mined or recycled origin of the feed changes the full footprint; add it from the supplier

Inputs are illustrative; this is refining energy only, not the gold's full footprint.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads the energy invoices behind the making stage into a fingerprinted Scope 1 and 2 record, and keeps material invoices on the Scope 3 trail. Material factors come from your supplier or a named database and are labelled with their source, so the product figure can be traced line by line.

• Can recycled gold be called low carbon?
• Gold jewellery per gram
• Recycled content in a product footprint

Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard, IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2 Energy (fuel defaults), CEA CO2 Baseline Database, version 21.0

Last reviewed 2026-10-21.