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

Canonical: https://senseible.earth/answers/sold-product-maintenance-emissions-optional

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](https://senseible.earth/answers/use-of-sold-products-category-11-calculation)
- [Indirect use-phase emissions](https://senseible.earth/answers/indirect-use-phase-emissions-optional)
- [Refrigerant leaks from sold ACs](https://senseible.earth/answers/refrigerant-leakage-in-use-of-sold-acs)
- [Scope 3 supplier evidence](https://senseible.earth/scope-3-supplier-evidence)

Sources: [GHG Protocol, Technical Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions, Category 11 (table 11.1)](https://ghgprotocol.org/sites/default/files/2022-12/Chapter11.pdf), [GHG Protocol, Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard](https://ghgprotocol.org/corporate-value-chain-scope-3-standard)

Last reviewed 2026-10-31.