Does a captive power plant inside my factory use the energy industries factors or the manufacturing ones in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tables?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2006 Guidelines place a firm's own power or heat plant in the sector where it runs, not in energy industries. For a factory's captive coal plant that points to the manufacturing methane (CH4) default of 10 kilograms per terajoule, not 1.
What the guide says about autoproducers
- An autoproducer generates electricity or heat for its own use or for sale, but not as its main business.
- Ownership does not decide where the emissions go.
- Emissions from autoproducers should be assigned to the sector where they were generated, not to the electricity and heat category for main activity producers.
- Good practice is to identify self-generation separately from other uses of fuel in that sector, such as process heat.
Where the two tables differ
Compared line by line, the energy industries table and the manufacturing table differ for coal and coke (and peat). Other bituminous coal: methane 1 kilogram per terajoule (TJ) in energy industries, 10 in manufacturing. Peat is 1 and 2. The other common fuels match: natural gas 1 for methane and 0.1 for nitrous oxide, gas or diesel oil 3 and 0.6, wood 30 and 4, and coal nitrous oxide 1.5. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the same in both: coal 94,600, natural gas 56,100, gas or diesel oil 74,100 kilograms per TJ.
What to write in your method
The guide's wording assigns a captive plant's emissions to the sector where it runs. It does not say in as many words which table then supplies the factor, so state the table you used and why. For a factory plant, the manufacturing table follows from the guide's wording, and it is the more cautious of the two for coal methane.
A captive plant burning 500 TJ of coal in a year (example quantity)
- CO2: 500 x 94,600 = 47,300,000 kilograms, or 47,300 tonnes
- Methane, manufacturing table: 500 x 10 = 5,000 kilograms; energy industries table: 500 x 1 = 500 kilograms
- At an example global warming potential of 28: 140 tonnes of CO2 equivalent against 14
- The table choice moves the total by 126 tonnes, about 0.27% of the CO2
The 500 TJ and the factor of 28 are example numbers.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, so the coal or gas the captive plant burns is on file each month, next to the grid bills for the rest of the site.
Last reviewed 2026-11-04. Factors are from the 2006 IPCC Guidelines, Tier 1 defaults. Confirm the table choice with your verifier or the scheme you report to.