Manage Carbon Footprint Records for Stationary Assets

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

• List the key fields on stationary asset carbon footprint records.
  
• Explain how scope allocation is determined for various fuel sources.
  
• Describe how emissions are calculated for a data center.
  

Introduction to Carbon Footprints

Sam is making great progress! He defined emissions sources and energy uses for stationary assets and looked at how emissions are calculated in the Net Zero Cloud app. Now he concentrates on rolling up the emissions data to a carbon footprint record. Sam can attach multiple stationary asset energy use records to a stationary asset carbon footprint record to get a single calculated carbon footprint for an asset.

While a stationary asset carbon footprint shows the tCO₂e emissions for an asset, its child records, Stationary Asset Carbon Footprint Items, show the tCO₂e emissions for individual fuel types. So, if Sam creates a carbon footprint record to calculate the total tCO₂e emissions for the NTO Headquarters for 2021, he can also have carbon footprint items that show emissions separately from, say, electricity, natural gas, and diesel.

Note that while Sam can manually create carbon footprint records and associate them with energy use records, the application can also do this for him. If a carbon footprint record exists for a given period, all new energy use records falling within that period get automatically associated with this carbon footprint record. If Sam creates a new energy use record and it covers a time period for which a carbon footprint record does not yet exist, Net Zero Cloud automatically creates a new carbon footprint and associates the energy record with it. This saves Sam a lot of time.

Only the energy use records that Sam has created, or to which he has at least View All access, are automatically rolled up into the carbon footprint record that he creates. Sam can work with the Salesforce admin to get View All or Modify All permission for the required records.

When Sam attaches energy use records to a carbon footprint record, the scope 1, 2, and 3 calculations of the energy use records automatically sum to a total value shown in the carbon footprint record. Just like for individual energy use records, Sam can also manually specify supplemental emissions by scope on all carbon footprint record types.

Stationary Asset Carbon Footprints

The following key data points are available on a stationary asset carbon footprint record.

General Information

Sam can specify the Stationary Asset Environment Source to which this footprint is associated, the reporting period of the carbon footprint, the stage of the footprint in the overall lifecycle, the previous year’s annual carbon footprint record, and the audit approval status. Sam can also select the allocation status for renewable energy used in the asset source.

Building Details

Sam can specify the building energy intensity lookup and the regional building energy intensity lookup that can be used to resolve gaps in the energy consumption data for a commercial building stationary asset (more on this in the next unit). 

If the Stationary Asset Environmental Source record for this footprint is already associated with a Regional Building Energy Intensity record, then the same Regional Building Energy Intensity record is automatically populated in the Carbon Footprint record. However, Sam needs to identify the Building Energy Intensity record that is most applicable to the building’s carbon footprint and select that record. 

Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Sam can see the autocalculated values for Total Scope 1, Total Scope 2 Market-Based, Total Scope 2 Location-Based, Total Scope 3 Upstream, and Total Scope 3 Downstream Emissions (tCO₂e) for the associated source. The values are derived by summing up values from the underlying energy use records.

Total Energy Use Summaries

Total Energy Consumption for the stationary asset source is calculated in kilowatt-hours, megawatt-hours, and gigajoules. Sam can also see the Total Building Indirect Energy Consumption (MWh), which is the consumption of energy specifically from electricity, heat, cooling, and steam, and excludes emissions from other fuels.

Renewable Energy Details

Based on the allocation status of the carbon footprint, Sam can see the Total Renewable Energy generated, both in absolute kWh and as a percentage of the overall electricity consumed. Also, he can see allocated renewable energy expressed in kWh, which is the renewable energy explicitly defined in energy use records. Sam can refer to these values to check the proportion of renewable or “cleaner” sources of energy used for each asset. This positions him better to meet his goal of increasing the allocated renewable energy percentage. 

Grid Mix Information

Sam can see the rolled up values from all electricity energy use records for both location-based and market-based grid mix data for the asset source. And just like for energy use records, the data is categorized by fuel sources, such as biomass, coal, solar, wind, and oil. This makes it easy for Sam to see the big picture but also hone in on the fuel source components and how they each play a role.

Energy Use Intensity Comparisons

Sam can see the total regional electricity consumption intensity and the percentage difference between the regional intensity and the intensity of the associated carbon footprint item for electricity consumption. Sam can use this information to understand how far off a particular stationary asset is from the average electricity consumption in that region. If the variance is too high, maybe it’s time to make the building more energy-efficient.

Data Quality Metrics

Sam can view the average monthly electricity consumption and the energy consumption intensities for the current and previous years, calculated both in square meters and square feet. Another handy value is to check the maximum variance above and below the average expressed as a percentage. This is super useful for Sam to understand the role seasonality plays and to identify any data abnormalities.

Footprint Items

The Stationary Asset Carbon Footprint Items for a Carbon Footprint contain data for an individual fuel type. Let’s take the example from the previous unit to see a snapshot of how data rolls up in Net Zero Cloud.

Here’s a way to see how carbon footprint items roll up data based on fuel type, and how carbon footprints roll up data based on consolidated energy consumption across all fuel types.

The following key information can be found on a stationary asset carbon footprint item record.

• Total Emissions (tCO₂e) from the fuel type.
  
• Total Energy Consumption of the Fuel Type, expressed in kWh equivalent, even if the underlying fuel is not electricity.
  
• Energy Consumption Intensity of the Fuel Type for the current and previous years.
  

What’s the Scope?

For each energy consumption record entered, there is a default scope against which the emissions are recorded based on the fuel type and asset ownership. The asset ownership is determined by the Company-Owned Asset checkbox on an asset’s record. The associated energy use records inherit this status from the asset, but it can also be overridden.

To understand the default scope allocation performed by Net Zero Cloud for various fuel types and for assets owned and leased by the reporting company, check out Stationary Asset Energy Use. 

There are typical allocations based on the Greenhouse Gas Protocol guidance, but exceptions occur frequently in the world of carbon accounting. There can be instances where Sam needs to change the default scope allocation for a specific asset source. For example, NTO might own the building, and therefore consider most fuels to be scope 1, while leasing equipment and considering emissions from that equipment to be scope 3. These determinations are often made with the help of experienced consultants.

The default scope allocations in Net Zero Cloud can be overridden through the Scope Allocation capability, where Sam can assign the scope into which a particular fuel type’s emissions must be aggregated. To do this, he creates a new carbon emissions scope allocation record, manually sets each individual fuel’s allocation to a scope in the child records, and then assigns the new carbon emissions scope allocation record to his asset. By using Scope Allocation, Net Zero Cloud users have ultimate flexibility in how they account for their GHG emissions.

Data Centers as Asset Sources

NTO, being a retail company, doesn’t operate any data centers. But there are companies who do, and they must define their data centers as stationary asset environmental sources. The reason that data centers are considered a special case in Net Zero Cloud is because of the way total electricity usage in the facility is estimated from known electricity consumption of the IT equipment. 

A Salesforce admin can configure the record type for the asset and information can be captured for data centers, similar to commercial buildings. While most calculations are similar for emissions, there are two major differences.

• If the fuel type on a stationary asset energy use record is Electricity for a data center asset source, the user must specify a value for the field Power Usage Effectiveness. Generally a value between 1 and 2, this is the ratio of the total amount of energy used by a data center to the energy delivered to just the computing equipment. The calculated emissions are scaled up by this value to calculate tCO₂e for electricity. For other fuel types, there are no changes to calculated emissions.
  
  Therefore, for data center assets, Total Fuel Consumption (kWh) = Fuel Consumption (kWh) * Power Usage Effectiveness
  
  
• In the other emissions factor set, there’s a provision to show the Data Center Refrigerant Leakage Rate value expressed in kg/IT kWh, which specifies the leakage rate of the refrigerant used for cooling the data center's computing equipment.
  
  

On a stationary asset carbon footprint record, the following values are autocalculated when the associated asset is a Data Center.

• Average Data Center Power Usage Effectiveness
  
• Data Center IT Diesel Consumption Intensity
  
• Previous Year Data Center Power Usage Effectiveness
  

Sam has explored carbon accounting for stationary assets and learned about the calculations. In the next unit, let’s follow along as Sam uses Net Zero Cloud to fill gaps in the carbon footprint data.

Resources

• Salesforce Help: Calculate Stationary Asset Carbon Footprints
  
• Salesforce Help: Calculate Stationary Asset Carbon Footprint Items
  
• Salesforce Help: Create an Electricity Emissions Factor Set Record
  
• Salesforce Help: Create an Other Emissions Factor Set Record
  
• Developer Guide: Stationary Asset Carbon Footprint Item