Which data Scope 1 and Scope 2 need

5 min read · Updated 23. September 2026

Emissions are split into scopes. Scope 1 is what burns or leaks at your premises: fuel in boilers and ovens, fuel in your own vehicles, refrigerant escaping from cooling systems. Scope 2 is the energy you buy: electricity, district heating, steam, cooling.

Scope 1 — what to look for

• Natural gas or heating oil: the year's consumption from supplier invoices, in kWh, m³ or litres. Take the billed quantity rather than the estimated one when the invoice shows both.
• Fuel for vehicles and machines: litres from fuel-card invoices or the pump log. If the vehicles run on company cards, that is the fastest source.
• Refrigerants: kilograms topped up, from the service report, and the refrigerant type (R404A, for example). If there was no service, nothing was topped up and the figure is zero — that is an answer, not a gap.

Scope 2 — what to look for

• Electricity: kWh from the invoices, per metering point. Keep the sites apart if you have more than one; the report shows them separately.
• District heating, steam, cooling: the same, from the distributor's invoices.
• Guarantees of origin or a green tariff: attach them if you have them. Without them the market-based figure is computed from the residual mix, which is usually the worse result.

Where it usually goes wrong

• Units. kWh and m³ are not the same thing; for gas the difference depends on the calorific value. Enter the unit from the invoice and leave the conversion to the calculation.
• Missing months. Eleven invoices instead of twelve is a common mistake. An empty month is not a zero — it is a missing figure, and the report says so.
• An estimate passed off as data. Estimating is allowed, hiding it is not. Mark an estimate as an estimate and say how you arrived at it.
• Own generation. Solar panels on your roof are not Scope 2; they are reported separately and do not reduce purchased energy on paper.

How long it takes

For a company with one site and a few vehicles, collecting the data is usually a few hours spread over a few days, because you wait for an invoice or a service report. The second year is much faster: the sources are known and already entered.