Scope 2 · GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance
Scope 2 District Heating & Cooling Calculator | Location & Market-Based
Audit-grade Scope 2 emissions from purchased district heat, steam, and cooling, for GHG Protocol, CSRD, and SBTi reporting. Location-based and market-based accounting, UK and 37 European country pathways, and a derived cooling path that converts delivered cold to grid electricity via plant efficiency. Emission factors in kg CO₂e/kWh throughout — no primary energy factors. UK network losses surfaced as a separate Scope 3 line, never folded into Scope 2.
Two calculation paths, one Scope 2 figure (GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance):
District energy splits into two structurally different calculations.
(1) Heat & steam uses a direct delivered-energy emission factor:
Scope 2 = delivered heat (kWh) × factor (kg CO₂e/kWh).
(2) Cooling has no published per-kWh factor — emissions are
derived from the grid electricity that drives the chiller plant:
Scope 2 = delivered cold (kWh) × plant efficiency (kW/ton) × grid factor.
Both report a location-based figure as the hero; a market-based figure
appears only when you enter a supplier-specific contractual factor.
Heat & steam — UK (DEFRA 2025): Delivered district heat or steam uses the DEFRA 2025 published factor of 0.17529 kg CO₂e/kWh (AR5 GWP-100), applied to the energy delivered at the building. You enter delivered energy; you never enter losses.
Heat & steam — 37 European countries (EUROSTAT-derived): Where no published national district-heat factor exists, the engine derives one from the country’s renewable-and-waste-heat share: DH factor = (1 − renewable share %) × 0.215 kg CO₂e/kWh, where 0.215 is a natural-gas-dominated fossil baseline (AR6 GWP-100). This is a derived value, not a regulator-published emission factor, and the engine labels it as such in the result.
Cooling — derived from grid electricity: District cooling carries no published per-kWh factor. The engine converts the cold you received into the electricity a chiller plant needed to produce it, using a plant efficiency in kW/ton (presets: Modern TES 0.78, Typical 0.92, Hot-climate 1.05, or a custom measured value), then multiplies by the country grid factor (Ember 2025 / EPA eGRID 2023). The result is a derived figure, flagged Low confidence unless you supply a measured efficiency.
UK network losses (Scope 3 Cat 3 companion): For the UK heat pathway the engine surfaces an upstream companion line — well-to-tank (0.03341 kg CO₂e/kWh) plus 5% distribution loss (0.00945 kg CO₂e/kWh) — reported separately as Scope 3 Category 3 and never added into the Scope 2 number. EUROSTAT and cooling pathways carry no companion.
Scope boundary. Excluded: on-site fuel combustion (Scope 1 — see the Scope 1 Stationary Combustion Calculator); purchased grid electricity for general use (separate Scope 2 electricity); and refrigerant leakage, which is a Scope 1 fugitive emission — use the Refrigerant Leakage Calculator.
Multi-site mode aggregates per-meter heat and cooling into a portfolio total with a per-site breakdown.
Applies to all sites uniformly.
Annualised: result × (12 ÷ period months).
Audit mode exposes the per-site, per-method calculation chain.
Enter purchased heat or cooling above to calculate
Location-based always shown. Market-based appears alongside when a supplier-specific factor is supplied. Scope 3 Cat 3 companion and a confidence rating are computed automatically.
Results are estimates based on the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance. UK heat & steam uses the DEFRA 2025 published factor; other European countries use a EUROSTAT renewable-share-derived factor against a natural-gas-dominated fossil baseline (0.215 kg CO₂e/kWh) — refine with your network’s actual fuel mix where known. District cooling is derived from the grid electricity that drives the plant (ASHRAE 2013 plant-efficiency benchmarks) unless your operator reports a cooling factor directly. Refrigerant leakage is excluded (Scope 1 fugitive — see the Refrigerant Leakage calculator). Full methodology notes.
Purchased district heating, steam, and cooling are the quietest line in most Scope 2 inventories — and the one auditors most often find mis-stated. They sit at the boundary between three accounting decisions that competitor calculators routinely collapse: location-based versus market-based reporting, delivered energy versus network losses, and — for cooling — the fact that there is no published emission factor at all.
This calculator computes heat and steam from a direct delivered-energy factor, derives cooling from the grid electricity that drives the chiller plant, and surfaces UK network losses as a separate Scope 3 line that never touches the Scope 2 number — the only architecture the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance accepts. Location-based is always the hero; market-based appears the moment you enter a contractual factor.
Scope 2 dual reporting is not optional once you hold a contractual instrument: if you enter a supplier-specific or green-tariff factor, both the location-based and the market-based figure must be disclosed. This calculator always shows location-based as the hero and adds market-based the moment a contractual factor is present, then exports an audit trail suitable for ESRS E1, CDP, and SBTi baseline submissions.
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What Are Scope 2 District Heating & Cooling Emissions?
Scope 2 covers the indirect emissions from energy your organisation purchases rather than combusts on site. For most companies that means electricity — but where a building is connected to a district energy network, the heat, steam, or chilled water it draws is also Scope 2. The emissions occurred at the central plant that produced the heat or cold; your organisation reports them because it consumed the output. This calculator handles the district-energy portion: purchased heat, steam, and cooling delivered over a shared network.
District Energy vs On-Site Combustion — The Boundary
The dividing line is who burns the fuel. If your own boiler burns gas to make heat, that is direct combustion and belongs in Scope 1 — use the Scope 1 Stationary Combustion Calculator. If a third-party plant burns the fuel and pipes you the resulting heat or chilled water, you never touched the fuel, so the emissions are indirect and sit in Scope 2. The same physical building can have both: a gas boiler (Scope 1) and a district-cooling connection (Scope 2). They are accounted separately and never combined.
Heat & Steam vs Cooling — Two Different Calculation Paths
This is the structural fact that distinguishes district energy from electricity. Heat and steam have a direct, published emission factor per kWh delivered — multiply and you are done. Cooling does not. There is no regulator-published “district cooling factor” because the emissions depend entirely on how the chilled water was produced (the plant’s efficiency) and how clean the electricity driving it was (the grid factor). The calculator therefore runs two different engines under one interface, switched by a per-site segmented toggle.
- Heat / steam. Direct emission factor. UK uses the DEFRA 2025 delivered-heat factor (0.17529 kg CO₂e/kWh); 37 European countries use a factor derived from the national renewable-and-waste-heat share.
- Cooling. No direct factor. Delivered cold is converted to the grid electricity the chiller plant consumed (via plant efficiency in kW/ton), then multiplied by the country grid factor. The result is explicitly a derived figure.
Included vs Excluded Emissions
| Included in this calculator | Excluded — report separately |
|---|---|
| Purchased district heat and steam (delivered-energy factor) | On-site fuel combustion (boilers, CHP you own) — Scope 1 Stationary Combustion |
| Purchased district cooling (derived from grid electricity) | Purchased grid electricity for general use — separate Scope 2 electricity |
| On-site district heat (delivered factor; WTT companion, UK) | Refrigerant leakage from chillers — Scope 1 fugitive, Refrigerant Leakage Calculator |
| Location-based figure (always) | Embodied emissions of the network infrastructure (pipes, plant) — out of operational GHG scope |
| Market-based figure (when a contractual factor is entered) | Downstream emissions of products you make using the heat/cold |
| UK upstream companion (WTT + distribution loss) as Scope 3 Cat 3 | EUROSTAT/cooling upstream losses (no companion data published) |
Location-Based vs Market-Based — The Dual-Reporting Requirement
The GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance (2015) requires two parallel accounting methods. Location-based reflects the average emissions intensity of the grid or network you physically draw from. Market-based reflects the emissions of the energy you have contractually chosen to buy — green tariffs, supplier-specific factors, or renewable instruments. The two answer different questions and the standard requires both to be reported whenever a market-based claim exists.
Measures: the physical intensity of the network/grid you draw from.
Data: DEFRA delivered-heat factor, EUROSTAT-derived factor, or Ember/eGRID grid factor for cooling.
When: always reported. This is the hero figure in the calculator.
Measures: the intensity of the energy you contractually chose to buy.
Data: a supplier-specific / contractual emission factor you enter directly.
When: appears only when you enter a contractual factor. Then both figures are disclosed.
When Each Applies in This Calculator
Location-based is always computed and shown. Market-based is conditional: for heat, switch the factor basis to “Supplier-specific” and enter a value; for cooling, switch the approach to “Supplier cooling EF” and enter a value. There is no residual-mix field in this calculator — residual mix belongs to grid electricity accounting, not district networks. Until a contractual factor is entered, the market-based line reads as an empty-state prompt inviting you to add one.
The Scope 2 Quality Criteria for a Market-Based Claim
A market-based figure is only defensible if the contractual instrument behind it meets the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Quality Criteria: the instrument conveys the energy’s attributes, is tracked and retired once, is as close as possible to the consumption period, and is sourced from the same market. A green-tariff letter from a district-heat supplier that meets these criteria supports a market-based factor; a vague marketing claim does not. Enter the contractual factor only when you can evidence the instrument behind it.
Because they describe different realities and a reader needs both. The location-based number tells you what your physical consumption costs the climate given the network you sit on — something you cannot escape by buying a certificate. The market-based number tells you what your purchasing decisions achieved. A company on a coal-heavy network that buys a clean district-heat tariff has a high location-based figure and a low market-based one — and that gap is exactly the information stakeholders want. Reporting only the lower figure hides the physical reality; reporting only the higher one hides the procurement effort. The standard requires both so neither story can be told alone.
How District Heat Emission Factors Are Built — UK and European Pathways
District heat does not have a single global factor because networks burn different fuels in different proportions. The calculator resolves a factor through one of two pathways depending on the country you select, and tells you which one it used and how confident it is in the result.
The UK Pathway — DEFRA Delivered-Heat Factor
For the United Kingdom the engine uses the DEFRA 2025 published factor of 0.17529 kg CO₂e/kWh (AR5 GWP-100) for district heat and steam. This is a delivered-heat factor — it already represents the emissions per kWh of heat arriving at your building, so you enter delivered energy and apply it directly. The same value covers both district-supplied and on-site-supplied heat in MasterBrain (district_heating.gbr.district and district_heating.gbr.onsite). Because it is a regulator-published factor, the UK pathway is the highest-confidence route in the tool.
The European Pathway — EUROSTAT Renewable-Share Derivation
For 37 European countries no published national district-heat factor exists, so the engine derives one. It takes the country’s renewable-and-waste-heat share and applies it against a natural-gas-dominated fossil baseline:
DH factor = (1 − renewable share %) × 0.215 kg CO₂e/kWh
The 0.215 baseline (AR6 GWP-100) represents a gas-boiler-dominated fossil network. Seven countries have a district-heat-specific renewable share in MasterBrain; the remaining 30 use the broader heating-and-cooling renewable share as a proxy, and an EU-27 fallback covers anything else. These are derived values, not regulator-published emission factors — the engine labels them as such in the result, and you should treat them as estimates pending your network’s actual fuel mix.
| Input | Value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fossil baseline | 0.215 kg CO₂e/kWh | Natural-gas-dominated, AR6 GWP-100. Derived baseline, not a published EF. |
| Belgium (DH-specific share) | 68% | District-heat-specific renewable share |
| Germany (DH-specific share) | 22.154% | Value the engine consumes (sub-field reads 22.15%) |
| Denmark (DH-specific share) | 72% | District-heat-specific renewable share |
| Spain (DH-specific share) | 82% | District-heat-specific renewable share |
| Hungary (DH-specific share) | 23% | District-heat-specific renewable share |
| Italy (DH-specific share) | 28% | District-heat-specific renewable share |
| Luxembourg (DH-specific share) | 84% | District-heat-specific renewable share |
| EU-27 fallback share | 34.527% | Used where no country-specific share resolves |
The other 30 countries use the heating-and-cooling-overall renewable share as a district-heat proxy — a less precise input that drops the result to Low confidence. Wherever the proxy or the 0.215 baseline is used, the engine says so explicitly in the result string.
Delivered-Energy Basis and the UK Network-Loss Companion
You always enter energy delivered at the building — you never enter distribution losses. The Scope 2 figure is delivered energy × the delivered-basis factor. For the UK pathway only, the engine then surfaces an upstream companion line and reports it separately as Scope 3 Category 3: well-to-tank emissions of 0.03341 kg CO₂e/kWh plus a 5% distribution loss of 0.00945 kg CO₂e/kWh, combining to 0.04286 kg CO₂e/kWh. On-site supply carries the WTT component but no distribution loss (no shared network). This companion is never added into Scope 2 — it is a separate inventory line.
Cooling — Why There Is No Per-kWh Factor
District cooling is the part of this calculator most competitor tools get wrong, because they look for a “district cooling emission factor” that does not exist. The emissions from chilled water depend on two things no single factor can capture: how efficiently the plant produced the cold, and how clean the electricity driving the plant was. So the calculator derives the figure instead of looking it up.
The Derivation — Delivered Cold to Grid Electricity
The chiller plant consumes electricity to produce cold. Plant efficiency is expressed in kW/ton (kilowatts of electrical input per ton of refrigeration output). The engine uses it to convert the cold you received back into the electricity the plant drew, then applies the country grid factor:
Cooling Scope 2 = delivered cold × plant efficiency (kW/ton) × grid factor
Because the result is built from a benchmark plant efficiency and a grid factor rather than a measured network factor, it is flagged Low confidence unless you enter your plant’s measured kW/ton, which raises it to Medium. This is a derived figure, not a published emission factor, and the engine labels it accordingly.
Plant Efficiency Presets and Their COP Equivalents
The tool’s selector is in kW/ton (there is no COP input box). For readers who think in coefficient of performance, the equivalence is COP = 3.51685 ÷ (kW/ton):
| Preset | Plant efficiency (kW/ton) | COP equivalent | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modern TES | 0.78 | 4.51 | Efficient plant with thermal energy storage |
| Typical | 0.92 | 3.82 | Representative district cooling plant |
| Hot-climate | 1.05 | 3.35 | High-ambient-temperature operation |
| In-building chiller (baseline) | 1.65 | 2.13 | Comparison benchmark, not a plant preset |
A “ton” of cooling is a rate of heat removal (about 3.517 kW of cooling). The kW/ton figure is how much electricity the plant spends to deliver one ton of cooling. Lower is better: a Modern TES plant at 0.78 kW/ton spends less electricity for the same cold than a hot-climate plant at 1.05. COP flips the ratio round — cooling delivered per unit of electricity — so a low kW/ton is a high COP. The plant efficiency is the single biggest lever on your cooling emissions, which is why the calculator asks for it rather than assuming one factor fits every network.
District Plant vs In-Building Chiller — The Avoided-Emissions Comparison
For cooling sites the engine also shows an informational comparison against an in-building chiller baseline of 1.65 kW/ton — the efficiency a building would typically achieve running its own chillers instead of buying from an efficient district plant. The difference is the emissions the district connection avoided. This is a decision-support figure only: it is not part of your Scope 2 total and is never reported as a reduction.
Worked Example — UK Heat Site + German Cooling Site, Side by Side
This example runs a two-site portfolio through the full calculation chain: a UK building on a district-heat network and a German building on a district-cooling network. All figures are produced by the calculator engine against MasterBrain v2026.14 — they are not hand-calculated.
Confidence Tiers — How Sure Is This Number?
Every result carries a confidence badge, because a regulator-published factor and a model-derived estimate should not be presented with the same certainty. The badge tells you — and your auditor — exactly how the number was produced and where its weak points are. The engine reports three tiers and surfaces a one-line reason with each.
| Pathway | Tier | Why (verbatim from the engine) |
|---|---|---|
| UK DEFRA heat | High confidence | UK DEFRA 2025 published district heat & steam factor (AR5 GWP-100). |
| Supplier-specific heat | High confidence | Supplier-specific (contractual) heat emission factor entered directly. |
| EUROSTAT DH-specific | Medium confidence | EUROSTAT DH-specific renewable share used; fossil portion assumed natural-gas-dominated (0.215 kg/kWh baseline). Refine with your network’s actual fuel mix for higher precision. |
| EUROSTAT proxy / EU-27 | Low confidence | Heating-&-cooling-overall renewable share used as a DH proxy; fossil portion assumed natural-gas-dominated (0.215 kg/kWh baseline). Treat as an estimate. |
| Cooling (benchmark efficiency) | Low confidence | Derived from grid electricity using a benchmark plant efficiency. Enter your measured kW/ton to raise confidence. |
For a multi-site portfolio the engine reports the lowest tier across all sites, so a single Low-confidence cooling site pulls the whole portfolio to Low — a deliberately conservative signal that prevents a high-confidence heat figure from masking a soft cooling estimate. The path to higher confidence is concrete: switch a EUROSTAT-proxy site to a DH-specific share where available, supply your network’s measured fuel mix, or enter a measured plant efficiency for cooling.
Scope 2 in CSRD / ESRS E1 and the GHG Protocol Context
Under the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), in-scope organisations report against the European Sustainability Reporting Standards. ESRS E1 (Climate Change) requires Scope 1, Scope 2, and material Scope 3 emissions consistent with the GHG Protocol — and for Scope 2 it specifically expects both the location-based and market-based figures where a market-based claim is made. The dual reporting this calculator produces maps directly onto that requirement.
Where District Energy Sits in the Inventory
Purchased district heat, steam, and cooling are Scope 2 alongside purchased electricity. ESRS E1 does not require district energy to be broken out as a separate line, but disaggregating it improves transparency and supports the gross-energy-consumption disclosures E1 also requires. The calculator’s JSON and CSV exports carry the per-site breakdown, factor provenance, and confidence tier needed to evidence both the emissions figure and the energy-consumption figure consistently.
The UK Companion and Scope 3 Completeness
The UK upstream companion (WTT plus distribution loss) belongs in Scope 3 Category 3 (fuel- and energy-related activities not included in Scope 1 or 2). Reporting it there — not in Scope 2 — keeps the Scope 2 figure clean while improving Scope 3 completeness, which CSRD’s materiality assessment increasingly scrutinises. Keeping the two lines separate is both a GHG Protocol requirement and a CSRD reporting-quality signal.
Audit Checklist — Eight Common District Energy Reporting Errors
Third-party verification of Scope 2 figures — under ISO 14064, ISAE 3410, or a voluntary protocol — traces each figure from activity data through to the reported tCO₂e. The eight items below are the most common sources of qualified opinions and restatements in district-energy reporting.
Data Sources, Factor Provenance, and Uncertainty Ranges
Emission Factor Provenance
All factors are live MasterBrain v2026.14 rows (the engine renders an em-dash, never a fabricated number, on a missing row) traceable to their source publications:
- UK district heat & steam (0.17529 kg CO₂e/kWh) — DEFRA 2025 GHG Conversion Factors, delivered-heat basis, AR5 GWP-100.
- UK WTT (0.03341) and distribution loss (0.00945) — DEFRA 2025, reported as the Scope 3 Category 3 companion only.
- European derived heat factors — EUROSTAT 2024 renewable-and-waste-heat shares applied to a 0.215 kg CO₂e/kWh natural-gas fossil baseline (AR6 GWP-100). Derived, not published EFs.
- Cooling plant efficiency benchmarks — ASHRAE 2013 (cited in prose; the figure is derived from grid electricity, not a published cooling EF).
- Grid electricity factors (cooling) — Ember 2025 and EPA eGRID 2023, location-based, at publisher GWP basis.
Uncertainty Disclosure
| Pathway | Basis | Confidence / character |
|---|---|---|
| UK DEFRA heat | Published delivered-heat factor | High — regulator-published |
| EUROSTAT DH-specific (7 countries) | DH-specific share + 0.215 baseline | Medium — derived, network-specific share |
| EUROSTAT proxy (30 countries) / EU-27 | Overall H&C share + 0.215 baseline | Low — derived, proxy share |
| Cooling (benchmark efficiency) | Plant efficiency × grid factor | Low — derived from grid electricity |
| Cooling (measured kW/ton) | Measured efficiency × grid factor | Medium — measured plant input |
| Supplier-specific (heat or cooling) | Contractual factor entered directly | High — contractual instrument |
The single largest improvement to a derived figure is replacing a modelled input with a measured one: a network-specific fuel mix in place of the EUROSTAT proxy, or a measured plant efficiency in place of a benchmark preset. Where a district-energy figure is material to the inventory, supplier-specific data should be sought.
Version History and Update Schedule
Factor data is sourced from MasterBrain v2026.14 (engine 1.0.0, deployed June 2026). DEFRA factors update annually each June; EUROSTAT renewable shares update annually; Ember and EPA eGRID grid factors update on their own publication cycles. The data version badge in the calculator footer always reflects the live MasterBrain version in use.
Frequently Asked Questions
Scope 2. The test is who burns the fuel. If a third-party plant burns fuel and pipes you the resulting heat or chilled water, you never combusted anything directly, so the emissions are indirect and sit in Scope 2 alongside purchased electricity. If you burn fuel in your own boiler, that is direct combustion and belongs in Scope 1 — use the Scope 1 Stationary Combustion Calculator for that.
Because cooling emissions depend on two things no single factor can capture: how efficiently the plant produced the cold (its kW/ton) and how clean the electricity driving it was (the grid factor). A published “district cooling factor” would have to assume both, which would be wrong for most networks. The calculator instead derives the figure — delivered cold × plant efficiency × grid factor — and labels it as a derived estimate, flagged Low confidence unless you supply a measured plant efficiency.
Whenever you make a market-based claim. The GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance requires both figures to be disclosed once you use a contractual instrument such as a green tariff or supplier-specific factor. In this calculator location-based is always the hero; the market-based line appears only when you enter a supplier-specific or contractual factor (factor basis “Supplier-specific” for heat, or “Supplier cooling EF” for cooling). There is no residual-mix field — that belongs to grid electricity accounting, not district networks.
After — you enter the energy delivered at your building, the figure on your invoice or meter. You never enter losses. The Scope 2 figure is delivered energy × the delivered-basis factor (the DEFRA 0.17529 is already a delivered-heat factor). For the UK pathway only, the engine then shows the 5% distribution loss plus well-to-tank emissions as a separate Scope 3 Category 3 companion line. That companion is never added into Scope 2.
It has two components, both UK-only: well-to-tank emissions of 0.03341 kg CO₂e/kWh and a 5% distribution loss of 0.00945 kg CO₂e/kWh, combining to 0.04286 kg CO₂e/kWh. These are upstream and transmission emissions that belong in Scope 3 Category 3 (fuel- and energy-related activities), not in Scope 2. Keeping them separate is a GHG Protocol requirement — folding them into Scope 2 would double-count the upstream emissions. On-site supply carries the WTT component but no distribution loss; EUROSTAT and cooling pathways carry no companion at all.
For 37 European countries without a published national factor, the engine derives one: DH factor = (1 − renewable-and-waste-heat share %) × 0.215 kg CO₂e/kWh, where 0.215 is a natural-gas-dominated fossil baseline. Seven countries (Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Luxembourg) have a district-heat-specific renewable share; the other 30 use a broader heating-and-cooling proxy share, and an EU-27 fallback of 34.527% covers the rest. These are derived values, not regulator-published emission factors, and the engine labels them as such with a Medium or Low confidence badge.
kW/ton is how much electricity a chiller plant spends to deliver one ton of cooling (a ton being about 3.517 kW of heat removal). Lower is better. COP — coefficient of performance — is the inverse: cooling delivered per unit of electricity, calculated as COP = 3.51685 ÷ (kW/ton). The presets are Modern TES 0.78 kW/ton (COP 4.51), Typical 0.92 (COP 3.82), and Hot-climate 1.05 (COP 3.35). The calculator’s selector is in kW/ton — there is no COP input box — so the COP figures are a layman equivalence only.
No. Refrigerant leakage is a Scope 1 fugitive emission, not part of purchased cooling, so it is out of scope here. Account for it in the Refrigerant Leakage Calculator. This calculator covers only the indirect emissions of the chilled water you purchase from a district network — the energy used to produce it, not any refrigerant that escapes the equipment.
Methodology Notes and Limitations
Emission-factor model, no primary energy factors. Every figure is built from emission factors in kg CO₂e/kWh. The calculator does not use primary energy factors anywhere; energy-to-emissions conversion is direct (heat) or via grid electricity (cooling).
Cooling is derived, not measured. District cooling has no published per-kWh factor. The result is built from a benchmark plant efficiency and a grid factor and is flagged Low confidence unless you enter a measured kW/ton. Treat it as an estimate where the figure is material.
European heat factors are derived. The EUROSTAT pathway derives a factor from a renewable share and a natural-gas fossil baseline (0.215 kg CO₂e/kWh). For 30 of 37 countries the share is a heating-and-cooling proxy, not a district-heat-specific value. These are model outputs, not regulator-published factors.
UK companion is Scope 3, never Scope 2. The WTT-plus-distribution-loss companion (0.04286 kg CO₂e/kWh) is reported as Scope 3 Category 3 and is never added into the Scope 2 figure. Only the UK pathway carries it.
Avoided-emissions figure is informational. The cooling comparison against a 1.65 kW/ton in-building chiller baseline is decision-support only. It is not a Scope 2 reduction and is not reported as one.
No CHP allocation. The engine does not split combined-heat-and-power output between heat and electricity; the fossil baseline assumes a gas boiler. Networks with significant CHP supply may warrant supplier-specific factors.
GWP basis. UK heat uses AR5 GWP-100 (an AR6 alternate is shown in the audit trail only); the EUROSTAT fossil baseline uses AR6 GWP-100; grid factors are at publisher basis. There is no GWP-mode toggle — AR5↔AR6 drift on these factors is around 0.05%.
You have calculated your Scope 2 district heating and cooling emissions, with location-based and (where applicable) market-based figures and the UK Scope 3 companion accounted separately. Scope 2 is one of three scopes — combine it with your Scope 1 direct emissions to build a full inventory denominator before setting a target.
Combine Scope 1, Scope 2, and material Scope 3 totals to compute your full inventory, then model a validated reduction trajectory with the SBTi Near-Term Target Calculator.
District energy is one piece of the inventory. If you still have on-site fuel combustion (boilers, dryers, generators) to account for, complete Scope 1 with the Scope 1 Stationary Combustion Calculator. If your chillers or HVAC use refrigerants, capture the Scope 1 fugitive emissions with the Refrigerant Leakage Calculator. Once your inventory is complete, model a science-based reduction target with the SBTi Near-Term Target Calculator — all three export audit trails that combine cleanly with this Scope 2 figure.
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