What is Scope 1 emissions, with everyday factory examples?

Scope 1 is the pollution that comes out of things you own or control: your boiler, furnace, generator, vehicles and leaking cooling gas. If it burns fuel on your site or in your own vehicle, or leaks from your own equipment, it is Scope 1. Electricity you buy is not.

The plain meaning

Scope 1 is everything that comes out of your own chimney, your own exhaust pipe and your own leaking pipe. If you own it or control it, the pollution from it is yours.

The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol Corporate Standard says direct emissions occur from sources owned or controlled by the company, for example combustion in owned or controlled boilers, furnaces and vehicles, and chemical production in owned or controlled process equipment.

Everyday factory examples

• Fuel burnt for heat: coal, oil, gas or liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) in a boiler, furnace, oven or canteen burner. The Corporate Standard lists boilers, furnaces, burners, heaters and engines under stationary combustion.
• Generators: diesel burnt in your own diesel generator (DG) set during a power cut.
• Vehicles you own: trucks, forklifts, pickups and staff buses that you own and fuel. The Corporate Standard lists automobiles, trucks and buses under mobile combustion.
• Refrigerant leaks: the Corporate Standard names hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) emissions during the use of refrigeration and air conditioning equipment as a fugitive emission. When a technician tops up the gas in your chiller or split air conditioner, the gas that was added is a fair sign of what leaked. That reading is ours, and a leak you never top up will not show up in any bill.
• Process emissions: gases released by the chemistry or physics of making the product itself, as in cement or aluminium. The Corporate Standard gives cement and aluminium as examples.

What is not Scope 1

• Electricity from the grid is Scope 2, even though you use it on your site.
• A truck you hire with a driver is often Scope 3 rather than Scope 1. The hired trucks page shows how to tell.
• Burning biomass such as husk or sawdust: the carbon dioxide (CO2) from it is reported separately, outside Scope 1. The Corporate Standard says so. Other gases from the burning still count in Scope 1.
• Gases outside the Kyoto Protocol list, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), shall not be included in Scope 1 but may be reported separately, as the Corporate Standard words it.

How to calculate it

For fuel, multiply the quantity on the invoice by a factor for that fuel: litres of diesel x kilograms (kg) of CO2 per litre. For a leak, multiply the kilograms of gas added by that gas's warming value. Keep one line per fuel, so each figure can be traced to a bill.

Example: one month at a small factory

• Generator: 600 litres of diesel x 2.645 kg of CO2 per litre = 1,587 kg
• Forklifts: 150 litres of diesel x 2.645 = 396.75 kg
• Boiler: 3,000 kg of Indian coal x 1.76 kg of CO2 per kg = 5,280 kg
• Scope 1 total: 1,587 + 396.75 + 5,280 = 7,263.75 kg, about 7.26 tonnes of CO2
• Not in this total: electricity from the grid (Scope 2) and any refrigerant top-up, which needs the gas type and its warming value

Example quantities, not a real factory. The factors are the ones Senseible uses now: diesel 2.645 kg per litre and Indian coal 1.76 kg per kg. The diesel figure is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2006 net calorific value of 43.0 terajoules per gigagram times 74,100 kg of CO2 per terajoule times 0.83 kg per litre.

What Senseible does here

Senseible reads fuel invoices and electricity bills into monthly records, so diesel, coal and gas quantities show up month by month. It does not find a refrigerant leak that was never written on a bill.

• Diesel generator: Scope 1 or Scope 2
• Hired trucks: Scope 1 or Scope 3
• Refrigerant top-up to carbon dioxide equivalent
• Scopes 1, 2 and 3 explained with a kitchen
• Get my free carbon number

Sources: GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, revised edition (Chapters 4 and 6)

Last reviewed 2026-11-07. Definitions and examples are from Chapters 4 and 6 of the Corporate Standard. The refrigerant top-up reading is ours. Re-check fuel factors when a new edition is issued.