Summary: This is an extract from Chapter 5.
Category 11: Use of sold products
This category includes emissions from the use of goods and services sold by the reporting company in the reporting year. A reporting company’s scope 3 emissions from use of sold products include the scope 1 and scope 2 emissions of end users. End users include both consumers and business customers that use final products.
This standard divides emissions from the use of sold products into two types:
- Direct use-phase emissions
- Indirect use-phase emissions
The minimum boundary of category 11 includes direct use-phase emissions of sold products. Companies may also account for indirect use-phase emissions of sold products, and should do so when indirect use-phase emissions are expected to be significant. See table 5.8 for descriptions and examples of direct and indirect use- phase emissions.
This category includes the total expected lifetime emissions from all relevant products sold in the reporting year across the company’s product portfolio. By doing so, the scope 3 inventory accounts for a company’s total GHG emissions associated with its activities in the reporting year. (Refer to section 5.4 for more information on the time boundary of scope 3 categories.) See box 5.7 for an example of reporting product lifetime emissions and box 5.8 for guidance related to product lifetime and durability. Refer to the GHG Protocol Product Standard for information on accounting for GHG emissions from individual products over their life cycle.
Companies may optionally include emissions associated with maintenance of sold products during use.
See section 5.6 for guidance on the applicability of category 11 to final products and intermediate products sold by the reporting company.
Companies may calculate emissions from category 11 without collecting data from customers or consumers. Calculating emissions from category 11 typically requires product design specifications and assumptions about how consumers use products (e.g., use profiles, assumed product lifetimes, etc.). For more information, see Guidance for Calculating Scope 3 Emissions, available online at www.ghgprotocol.org. Companies are required to report a description of the methodologies and assumptions used to calculate emissions (see chapter 11).
Where relevant, companies should report additional information on product performance when reporting scope 3 emissions in order to provide additional transparency on steps companies are taking to reduce GHG emissions from sold products. Such information may include GHG intensity metrics, energy intensity metrics, and annual emissions from the use of sold products (see section 11.3). See section 9.3 for guidance on recalculating base year emissions when methodologies or assumptions related to category 11 change over time.
Any claims of avoided emissions related to a company’s sold products must be reported separately from the company’s scope 1, scope 2, and scope 3 inventories. (For more information, see section 9.5.)
Table 5.8
| Type of Emissions | Product Type | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Direct use-phase emissions (Required) | Products that directly consume energy (fuels or electricity) during use | Automobiles, aircraft, engines, motors, power plants, buildings, appliances, electronics, lighting, data centers, web-based software |
| Fuels and feedstocks | Petroleum products, natural gas, coal, biofuels, and crude oil | |
| Greenhouse gases and products that contain or form greenhouse gases that are emitted during use | CO₂, CH₄, N₂O, HFCs, PFCs, SF₆; refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment, industrial gases, fire extinguishers, fertilizers | |
| Indirect use-phase emissions (Optional) | Products that indirectly consume energy (fuels or electricity) during use | Apparel (requires washing and drying), food (requires cooking and refrigeration), pots and pans (require heating), and soaps and detergents (require heated water) |
Box [5.7] Example of reporting product lifetime emissions
An automaker sells one million cars in 2010. Each car has an expected lifetime of ten years. The company reports the anticipated use-phase emissions of the one million cars it sold in 2010 over their ten year expected lifetime. The company also reports corporate average fuel economy (km per liter) and corporate average emissions (kg CO2e/km) as relevant emissions-intensity metrics.
Box [5.8] Product lifetime and durability
Because the scope 3 inventory accounts for total lifetime emissions of sold products, companies that produce more durable products with longer lifetimes could appear to be penalized because, as product lifetimes increase, scope 3 emissions increase, assuming all else is constant. To reduce the potential for emissions data to be misinterpreted, companies should also report relevant information such as product lifetimes and emissions intensity metrics to demonstrate product performance over time. Relevant emissions intensity metrics may include annual emissions per product, energy efficiency per product, emissions per hour of use, emissions per kilometer driven, emissions per functional unit, etc.