How does the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Scope 3 guidance work out the emissions of goods stored in someone else's warehouse: by site data or by average data?
The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol's Scope 3 guidance gives two ways to count stored goods. The site-specific method adds the site's fuel, electricity and refrigerant leakage, then takes your share of cubic metres. The average-data method multiplies volume, days stored and a per-day factor.
Site-specific method
- Add the facility's three sources: fuel burnt in kilowatt hours times the fuel factor, plus electricity in kilowatt hours times the electricity factor, plus refrigerant leaked in kilograms times the refrigerant factor.
- Take your share: the volume of your goods in cubic metres divided by the total volume of goods in the facility, times that facility total.
- Do this for each facility and add them. If the facility holds other companies' goods, the guide says the emissions should be allocated to you, and it names average occupancy of the facility as one of the data points to collect.
Optional refinements the guide names
- Allocate by storage method, for example temperature-controlled against ambient, if the data exist. The guide says this step can be significant within shared storage.
- Allocate by the length of time your goods spend in storage.
- If you have a large number of distribution channels, sample them.
Average-data method
Where site data are not available, multiply, for each facility, the volume of stored goods (cubic metres, pallets or twenty-foot container equivalents (TEU)), times the average number of days stored, times a factor per unit per day. Factors come per pallet per day, per square or cubic metre per day, or per TEU. The guide lists supplier records and internal management systems for the volumes, and life cycle databases, supplier factors, industry associations and academic papers for the factors.
How it sits with the tonnes-handled key on this site
The shared warehouse page here takes your share by tonnes handled, with pallet-days as a check. The GHG Protocol's example takes it by volume in cubic metres. Both are shares of the same site total. Each key gives a different answer, so pick one, say which, and keep it for every year.
Two warehouses, the guide's own example figures
- Warehouse 1: ((10,000 x 0.8) + (1,000 x 0.25)) x (100 / 400) = 8,250 x 0.25 = 2,062.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)
- Warehouse 2: ((15,000 x 0.8) + (2,000 x 0.25)) x (200 / 800) = 12,500 x 0.25 = 3,125 kilograms
- Total: 2,062.5 + 3,125 = 5,187.5 kilograms
- Average-data check from the guide's pasta example: 4,000 x 2 x 0.01 + 4,000 x 2 x 0.02 = 80 + 160 = 240 kilograms of CO2e
Electricity 0.8 and natural gas 0.25 kilograms of CO2e per kilowatt hour, and the volumes, are the guide's example numbers, which it says are for example only and do not refer to actual data. Do not use them as factors.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, so electricity and diesel at your own warehouse show up once uploaded. For a warehouse you do not run, ask the operator for the site totals and your share.
- Shared warehouse emissions: your share
- Storage of sold products: Scope 3 category 9
- Warehouse electricity per pallet position
- Free calculators
Last reviewed 2026-11-05. Methods are from the GHG Protocol's Scope 3 Technical Guidance. Use factors for your own grid and fuels and the allocation key your buyer or verifier accepts.