If my technician recovers gas from one unit and tops up another with it, how do I count it?
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) leaves recycled and reclaimed gas out of sales of new refrigerant, so purchase invoices alone would miss gas reused on site. For one company our reading is to count the kilograms charged into each unit from service tickets, whatever the gas came from.
What the IPCC says
These lines are written for national markets. What follows for one company is our reading.
- Annual sales of new refrigerant "does not include recycled or reclaimed chemical" (Equation 7.9).
- For the supply and demand check, refrigerant "recovered and recharged directly to the same owner's equipment" is not seen as a need.
- In estimating consumption, "Reprocessing of recovered fluid should not be included in consumption estimates".
The two ways to count
- By purchases: kilograms on invoices. Reused gas never appears, so a leak topped up with recovered gas looks smaller than it was.
- By service ticket: kilograms charged into the unit to bring it back to its rated charge. A unit that needed 6 kilograms lost 6 kilograms, whatever cylinder they came from.
Avoid counting the same gas twice
Gas pulled from a retiring unit and put into another is not emitted when it is moved. Record it as recovered on the retiring unit's ticket and as charged on the receiving unit's ticket, so the retiring unit's end-of-life figure does not include it.
One top-up, R-410A
- Unit A needs 6 kilograms to return to rated charge: 4 kilograms from a new cylinder, 2 kilograms recovered from scrapped unit B
- Invoice view: 4 kilograms, 4 x 2,255.5 = 9,022 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)
- Service ticket view: 6 kilograms, 6 x 2,255.5 = 13,533 kilograms
- Difference: 13,533 minus 9,022 = 4,511 kilograms, the 2 kilograms of reused gas
Quantities are examples. The value 2,255.5 for R-410A is 0.5 x 771 + 0.5 x 3,740 from the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into dated records. It does not read recovery notes, service tickets or equipment nameplates, so keep those papers yourself and add the kilograms to your Scope 1 figure.
Sources: IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 3, Chapter 7: Emissions of Fluorinated Substitutes for Ozone Depleting Substances, IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, Working Group I, Chapter 7 Supplementary Material, Table 7.SM.7
Last reviewed 2026-11-05. National market wording applied to one company is our reading. Keep recovery weights from your technician's log.