Do I count maintenance emissions of products after I sell them?

Optional. The GHG Protocol's Category 11 guidance requires the direct use-phase emissions of products you sell and lets you add emissions from maintaining them during use. Refrigerant leaking from a sold air conditioner is not optional maintenance: gases released during use are direct use-phase emissions and stay required.

Required and optional in Category 11

• Required, direct use-phase: fuel or electricity the product uses, fuels and feedstocks you sell, and greenhouse gases the product releases in use, such as refrigerant.
• Optional, indirect use-phase: energy the product needs from something else, such as hot water to wash a garment. The guidance says to include it when it is expected to be significant.
• Optional, maintenance during use.

What maintenance usually means here

The guidance does not list what maintenance covers. Common readings are the spares and consumables replaced over a product's life: oil and filters for a genset or tractor, seals and bearings for a pump, replacement batteries for an inverter, and the travel of the technician who services it. If you include any of these, say which.

Service you run yourself is not Category 11

If your own technicians service products under an annual maintenance contract, their vehicle fuel is your Scope 1 and the spares you buy are your purchased goods. Category 11 maintenance is the work customers or third parties do after the sale.

If you include it

Category 11 counts the expected lifetime emissions of products sold in the reporting year, so maintenance is estimated over the whole life too. Show it as a separate line from direct use-phase emissions, and report the lifetime, service intervals and factors you assumed, since Category 11 requires a description of methods and assumptions.

Worked example: lubricating oil for 500 gensets sold this year

• Expected life 10 years, 2 oil changes a year, 12 litres of oil per change
• 500 x 10 x 2 x 12 = 1,20,000 litres of lubricating oil over the products' lifetime
• Multiply by a cradle-to-gate factor for lubricating oil from a named life cycle database
• Report it apart from the diesel the gensets will burn, which is required

Life, intervals and oil volume are an example. Use the service schedule in your own manual.

What Senseible does here

Senseible does not model use-phase or maintenance emissions of products you sell. It reads your own fuel slips, bills and purchase invoices, so service work you do yourself shows up in your Scope 1 and purchases.

• Use of sold products: the calculation
• Indirect use-phase emissions
• Refrigerant leaks from sold ACs
• Scope 3 supplier evidence

Sources: GHG Protocol, Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions, Category 11 (table 11.1), GHG Protocol, Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard

Last reviewed 2026-10-31.