Sector PCF — Consumer Electronics Calculator (Laptops / Smartphones / Servers)
Compute a cradle-to-gate product carbon footprint for laptops, smartphones, and servers from the bill of materials, combining cited component-LCA constants with live MasterBrain grid, materials, and freight factors under ISO 14067.
What this calculator computes. A cradle-to-gate ISO 14067 product carbon footprint (PCF) for a single electronic device — the embodied (manufacturing) emissions only, from raw-material extraction through component fabrication, enclosure production, packaging, inbound assembly energy, and first-leg freight to the assembly gate. The declared functional unit is one device. The use phase is computed and shown in a separate context card; it is never summed into the cradle-to-gate headline.
How the number is built — bottom-up from the bill of materials. Unlike a farm-gate food PCF, the components that dominate an electronics footprint — battery, logic ICs, memory, display, and bare printed circuit board, together roughly 60–80% of the total — have no embodied-carbon coverage in MasterBrain. The engine therefore reads two different kinds of value: (a) cited literature and EPD-derived component-intensity constants for the dominant lines (battery from IVL 2019 and Argonne GREET 2023; logic IC from Boyd 2011 and imec.netzero 2023; display from Hischier and OEM EPDs; PCB from ecoinvent and IPC), which are user assumptions flagged in the calculator’s data-quality meter; and (b) live MasterBrain factors for the tail — grid electricity, enclosure metals and polymers, packaging, and freight.
Boundary discipline. Published OEM “carbon footprint” headlines are usually full life-cycle figures (production + transport + use + end-of-life). This calculator’s output is cradle-to-gate manufacturing only — compare it against the production slice of an Environmental Product Declaration, not the all-in total. End-of-life and WEEE recovery credits are outside the boundary and are not applied. There is no co-product allocation control: recycled content is expressed through the user’s choice of primary versus recycled material factor, not a blended percentage.
GWP basis. Component constants and MasterBrain materials are carried in CO2e. The engine exposes an AR5/AR6 GWP-100 switch via the MasterBrain GWP table; corporate PCF reporting defaults to AR6. Grid and DEFRA-derived freight factors carry their source basis by design and are not rebased — never mix GWP bases inside one declared total.
Use-phase context — operating energy over the device’s life. This is outside the cradle-to-gate boundary and is shown in its own card, never added to the PCF headline. For servers and laptops it typically dwarfs manufacturing.
Edit the smartphone bill-of-materials above to calculate
Results appear instantly. A contribution-by-stage bar, source hotspots (Pareto), a data-quality / confidence meter, a literature-component share note, a separate use-phase context card and the full audit trail appear after calculation.
Results are indicative cradle-to-gate Product Carbon Footprints for consumer-electronics devices, aligned with the GHG Protocol Product Life Cycle Standard and ISO 14067:2018, reported per device (or per device-year of service life). The components that dominate an electronics footprint — the battery, integrated circuits, memory/storage, the display panel and the bare PCB — have no published embodied-carbon rows in MasterBrain, so the figure is built up from a component bill-of-materials: the dominant component lines use cited literature / EPD intensities (IVL, Argonne GREET, Boyd, imec, decomposed manufacturer EPDs) and are your own assumptions, while the tail (enclosure metals and polymers, grid electricity, freight and packaging) reads verified MasterBrain factors. The ABS/PC line uses a rigid-plastic proxy. Component intensities are cradle-to-gate inclusive of fab energy, so the assembly-electricity line covers final assembly and test only. The use phase (device operating energy) — typically the largest life-cycle stage for servers and laptops — is shown separately and is not added to this headline; end-of-life / WEEE recovery and Module D are outside the cradle-to-gate boundary, as are water and other non-GHG impacts. Generic literature factors suit early-stage estimating only — replace the most material component lines with supplier-specific (primary) EPD data, document the boundary, and complete a critical review under ISO 14067 / ISO 14071 before publishing a PCF, issuing an EPD, or exchanging product footprints.
A smartphone and a rack server sit at opposite ends of the same accounting problem. The phone is almost all embodied carbon — the energy and high-GWP process gases locked into its chips and battery during manufacture dwarf the trickle of electricity it draws over its life. The server inverts that: years of duty-cycle electricity swamp the silicon it was built from. Report both with one mental model and you will misstate at least one of them.
A defensible electronics PCF is built bottom-up from the bill of materials, keeps cradle-to-gate manufacturing strictly separate from the use phase, and is honest about which numbers are measured factors and which are cited literature assumptions.
A product carbon footprint for consumer electronics is the cradle-to-gate CO2e embodied in making one device — dominated by semiconductors, the battery, and the PCB. It is reported separately from use-phase electricity, which depends on the grid factor.
What Is a Product Carbon Footprint for Electronics?
A product carbon footprint quantifies the greenhouse-gas emissions associated with a single product across a defined slice of its life cycle, expressed in carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e). For consumer electronics, the headline figure most practitioners need is the cradle-to-gate manufacturing footprint: everything embodied in building the device, up to the point it leaves the assembly gate. This is the number this calculator returns, and it is the number an auditor can reconcile against the production stage of an Environmental Product Declaration.
Cradle-to-Gate vs Cradle-to-Grave — What This Calculator Covers
Cradle-to-gate stops at the factory gate: raw materials, component fabrication, enclosure, packaging, inbound assembly energy, and first-leg freight. Cradle-to-grave continues through distribution, the use phase, and end-of-life treatment. The two boundaries answer different questions, and conflating them is the single most common error in electronics carbon reporting. If you need the full life-cycle figure — including the years of electricity a device draws in service — that is a cradle-to-grave question, handled by the ISO 14067 cradle-to-grave calculator, not this one.
The Functional Unit Problem
An electronics PCF needs an explicit functional unit. “One device” is the natural unit for a manufacturing footprint and is what this calculator declares. But for cross-device comparison the more meaningful unit is often one year of service: a server with a high embodied footprint amortised over a seven-year duty cycle can out-perform a consumer device replaced every two years. The calculator reports per-device; the per-year-of-service framing is a comparison you layer on top using the device’s expected service life.
Embodied emissions are paid once, at manufacture, and are fixed the moment the device ships. Use-phase emissions accrue every year of operation and depend entirely on the electricity grid the device runs on. A smartphone is embodied-dominant; a server is use-phase-dominant. The split is what defines the device class, and it is why the two must be reported on separate lines.
How an Electronics PCF Is Built — Bottom-Up From the Bill of Materials
There is no single “electronics emission factor.” A device’s footprint is assembled component by component from its bill of materials, because the same product category — a laptop, say — spans an enormous range depending on die area, memory capacity, display technology, battery chemistry, and enclosure material. The engine multiplies each component’s quantity by an intensity factor, sums the lines, and adds the assembly-energy and freight tail.
Why the Dominant Components Are Cited Constants, Not Live Factors
The components that dominate an electronics footprint — battery, logic and memory ICs, display, and bare PCB — have no embodied-carbon coverage in MasterBrain. Those lines use baked-in literature and EPD-derived constants in the engine, each cited to its external source and flagged in the calculator’s data-quality meter as a literature-grade assumption rather than a verified factor. They are deliberately not presented as MasterBrain values, because there is no MasterBrain key behind them. Treating an OEM-EPD-decomposed display intensity as if it were a platform factor would overstate the precision of the result.
What the Calculator Reads Live From MasterBrain
The tail of the footprint — the components that are covered — reads live, verified MasterBrain rows. Enclosure aluminium and steel, enclosure polymers, paper and plastic packaging, assembly-stage grid electricity, and the spend-based screening fallback all resolve to current MasterBrain factors at the live data-layer version. Freight uses DEFRA-derived per-tonne-kilometre defaults applied parametrically by the engine. The table below shows the boundary between the two kinds of value:
| Footprint line | Where the value comes from | Live MasterBrain factor? |
|---|---|---|
| Battery (NMC / NCA / LFP / LCO) | Cited literature (IVL 2019; Argonne GREET 2023) | No — engine constant |
| Logic IC (by node) | Cited literature (Boyd 2011; imec.netzero 2023) | No — engine constant |
| Memory (DRAM / NAND) | Decomposed OEM EPD medians | No — engine constant |
| Display (LCD / OLED / e-paper) | Cited literature (Hischier; OEM EPDs) | No — engine constant |
| PCB (by layer count) | ecoinvent; IPC | No — engine constant |
| Enclosure metals (aluminium, steel) | MasterBrain materials (module A1–A3) | Yes |
| Enclosure polymers (ABS/PC proxy etc.) | MasterBrain materials (module A1–A3) | Yes |
| Packaging (paper/board, films) | MasterBrain materials (module A1–A3) | Yes |
| Assembly + use-phase electricity | MasterBrain grid factor by country | Yes |
| Freight (road / sea / air) | DEFRA-derived per-tonne-km defaults | Parametric (engine) |
The engine ships an upgrade hook — a reserved MasterBrain prefix for curated component intensities — that is empty today. Every read against it misses and falls back to the cited literature constant. If the platform later curates verified component factors, the engine picks them up automatically and the data-quality meter rises. Until then, the calculator is explicit that the dominant lines are literature assumptions, which is exactly the transparency a reviewer expects from a defensible PCF.
Why Semiconductors and the PCB Dominate Embodied Emissions
Open any credible electronics LCA and the same pattern appears: integrated circuits and the board they sit on account for the largest share of embodied carbon, frequently more than the battery and enclosure combined. Two mechanisms drive this — the energy intensity of wafer fabrication, and the global warming potential of the process gases used to etch and clean those wafers.
Logic-IC Intensity Scales With Die Area and Node
Fabrication emissions are best expressed per unit of die area, because a larger die consumes proportionally more wafer, more process steps, and more fab energy. Intensity also rises sharply as the process node shrinks: a leading-edge node packs far more process complexity — more lithography, etch, and deposition cycles — into each square centimetre than a mature node. The cited engine constants reflect this, rising from roughly 1.5 kg CO2e/cm² for a mature node (≥65 nm, Boyd 2011) to around 4.5 kg CO2e/cm² at 28–14 nm and on the order of 12 kg CO2e/cm² at leading nodes of 7 nm and below (imec.netzero 2023, high uncertainty). Die area times node intensity is usually the single largest line in a smartphone or laptop footprint.
A leading-node chip can carry several times the embodied carbon per square centimetre of a mature-node chip of identical area. Shrinking the transistor does not shrink the footprint — it concentrates it. The carbon cost of “more performance per millimetre” is more process energy and more high-GWP gas per millimetre.
PFC Etch and Clean Gases and the GWP Problem
Wafer fabrication uses perfluorinated compounds — CF4, C2F6, NF3, SF6 and related species — for plasma etching and chamber cleaning. These gases have global warming potentials hundreds to tens-of-thousands of times that of CO2, so even small unabated leakage contributes materially to a fab’s direct emissions, which flow downstream into every chip it produces. The direct fab-gas emissions themselves are a Scope 1 process-emission problem for the fab operator; if you account for those gases at the fabrication site rather than as an embodied intensity, the semiconductor etch-gases calculator handles the IPCC Tier 1 per-area approach. In this PCF calculator they are already embedded in the cited per-cm² logic-IC constants.
The Bare Board Is Not Free
The printed circuit board carries its own substantial intensity, driven by layer count and construction. A simple two-layer board sits near 0.05 kg CO2e/cm², while a high-density interconnect or flex board climbs toward 0.45 kg CO2e/cm² (ecoinvent; IPC). For a compact, densely-routed device the PCB frequently ranks second only to the ICs themselves.
Device-Class Deep Dive — Laptops vs Smartphones vs Servers
The three archetypes this calculator targets behave very differently once you separate embodied from use-phase. The bars below show the characteristic split for each class — illustrative of where each device’s emissions concentrate, not a calculator output.
Indicative life-cycle splits by device class (embodied share of total life-cycle CO2e). Use-phase makes up the remainder and is highly grid-dependent. Illustrative ranges from device-LCA literature, not calculator output.
Smartphones — embodied-dominant
A phone draws very little electricity over its life, so its footprint is almost entirely manufacturing: the SoC, the OLED display, a dense HDI board, and a small battery. Cradle-to-gate manufacturing bands typically fall in the region of 40–90 kg CO2e per device (Apple and Fairphone product EPDs, manufacturing slice). The largest stages are the leading-node logic IC and the PCB.
Laptops — mixed, still embodied-led
A laptop adds a larger display, more memory and storage, a larger battery, and a metal enclosure, pushing cradle-to-gate bands into roughly 150–450 kg CO2e per device (Dell and Apple notebook EPDs, manufacturing slice). Use-phase grows with screen-on hours but, for typical office duty cycles over a three-to-five-year life, embodied still tends to lead.
Servers — use-phase-dominant
A rack server carries a heavy embodied footprint — often 1,000–3,500 kg CO2e per unit (rack-server LCAs; Boavizta) — but runs continuously for years at high power, so multiplied over its duty cycle the use phase usually dominates the life-cycle total. For servers the grid factor and the data-centre PUE multiplier matter far more than for any consumer device.
All three bands above are cradle-to-gate manufacturing only and are cited literature ranges, not the calculator’s computed output. Use them as a sanity range for a device of that class — if your computed result lands far outside the band, re-check the bill of materials before trusting it.
The Recycled-Aluminium Lever and Other Demonstrable Reductions
Most of an electronics footprint is fixed by the device’s function — you cannot wish away the silicon a phone needs to work. But the enclosure is a genuine, demonstrable lever, and the calculator exposes it directly through the choice of material factor rather than a recycled-content percentage.
Primary (virgin) aluminium and recycled secondary aluminium are separate selectable factors, and the gap between them is large: primary aluminium sits near 10.1 kg CO2e/kg against roughly 0.26 kg CO2e/kg for recycled secondary — both live MasterBrain materials values at module A1–A3. For a metal-bodied laptop or phone, switching the enclosure source from primary to recycled aluminium can cut tens of kilograms of CO2e from the cradle-to-gate total. Because the engine reads these as distinct factors selected by the user, the reduction is auditable: the bill of materials records exactly which factor was applied.
Switch enclosure metal from primary to recycled, choose a less aggressive process node where performance allows, reduce PCB layer count, and assemble in a lower-carbon grid region. Each is a line the calculator lets you change and re-run. There is no allocation control to tune and no end-of-life credit to claim — the reductions you can show are the ones embedded in material and energy choices.
Use-Phase Emissions — Shown, Never Summed Into the Headline
The calculator computes a use-phase estimate and presents it in its own context card. It is service life (years) multiplied by annual energy draw (kWh per year) multiplied by the grid factor — the grid factor being a live MasterBrain value by country. The use-phase figure is shown deliberately, because for servers it dominates the life-cycle total, but it is never added into the cradle-to-gate headline. Two boundaries, two numbers.
Why Grid-Factor Choice Changes Everything
Use-phase emissions scale linearly with the grid the device runs on, and grid factors vary by more than an order of magnitude across countries. The same server consumes the same kilowatt-hours whether it sits in a coal-heavy or a hydro-heavy region, but its use-phase CO2e differs enormously. Where a device is sold into a market-based reporting context, the choice between a location-based grid average and a market-based, contract-adjusted factor changes the result again — the distinction is the same one that governs Scope 2 reporting, and the residual-mix calculator covers the market-based mechanics.
The Boundary-Mismatch Trap
An OEM may publish a phone at, say, around 64 kg CO2e. That headline is almost always the full life cycle — production, transport, use, and end-of-life together. This calculator’s output, and the manufacturing bands quoted earlier, are cradle-to-gate manufacturing only. Comparing the calculator’s number to an OEM all-in headline compares two different boundaries and will misrepresent both. To compare like with like, extract the production or manufacturing slice from the OEM EPD and set it against the calculator’s cradle-to-gate figure. The engine reinforces the discipline structurally: the use-phase card is shown but never folded into the headline number.
Worked Example — The Pre-Filled Flagship Smartphone
The calculator boots pre-filled with a flagship-smartphone bill of materials so the result is legible the moment the page loads: declared unit one device, assembly in China, sea-import transport, native GWP basis. The inputs below are the on-page default.
The default configuration computes to approximately 50 kg CO2e per device, as computed in the calculator at engine v1.0.0 / MasterBrain v2026.110 — within the 40–90 kg smartphone manufacturing band, with the leading-node logic IC and the HDI PCB as the largest stages. The MasterBrain-backed tail values can shift on a data-layer version bump, so load the default and read the live headline rather than treating the figure below as fixed.
| Component | Factor / option | Quantity | Value source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Battery | Li-ion NMC | 0.017 kWh (17 Wh) | IVL 2019; Argonne GREET 2023 |
| Logic IC | Leading node ≤7 nm | 1.0 cm² die | imec.netzero 2023 |
| Memory — DRAM | DRAM | 8 GB | Decomposed OEM EPD |
| Memory — NAND | NAND | 256 GB | Decomposed OEM EPD |
| Display | OLED | 95 cm² | Hischier; OEM EPDs |
| PCB | HDI / flex | 35 cm² | ecoinvent; IPC |
| Enclosure metal | Aluminium — recycled | 0.03 kg | MasterBrain materials (A1–A3) |
| Enclosure polymer | ABS/PC (rigid proxy) | 0.03 kg | MasterBrain materials (A1–A3) |
| Packaging | Paper / board carton | 0.12 kg | MasterBrain materials (A1–A3) |
| Assembly electricity | China grid | 6 kWh | MasterBrain grid factor |
| Transport | Sea-import scenario | 0.19 kg moved | DEFRA-derived freight default |
The enclosure line uses the recycled-aluminium factor rather than primary — a deliberate default that demonstrates the lever in Section 5. Switching it to primary aluminium materially raises the enclosure contribution; re-run the calculator to see the delta for your own configuration.
Standards and Frameworks Governing Electronics PCFs
An electronics PCF is governed by the same product-level accounting standards as any other manufactured good. Four frameworks matter most, and they are broadly compatible — they differ in scope and in how prescriptive they are about boundaries and data quality.
| Framework | What it governs | Relevance to electronics |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 14067 | Product carbon footprint quantification and reporting, building on ISO 14040/14044 LCA principles | The primary standard this calculator follows; defines the cradle-to-gate boundary and functional-unit discipline |
| GHG Protocol Product Standard | Product life-cycle GHG accounting and reporting | Co-governing framework; aligns the PCF with corporate Scope 3 Category 1 and Category 11 accounting |
| EU Product Environmental Footprint | Multi-criteria LCA method with prescriptive category rules | Relevant for EU-market declarations; carbon is one of several PEF impact categories |
| WBCSD Pathfinder Framework | Methodology for exchanging primary, product-level PCF data across value chains | The protocol under which suppliers pass verified component and product PCFs upstream |
Where a device reaches end-of-life, recovery and recycling are governed separately under standards such as R2v3 Responsible Recycling. Those flows are outside this calculator’s cradle-to-gate boundary, but they matter for any full life-cycle claim and for the recycled-content material factors the calculator does let you select.
Common Electronics PCF Reporting Errors
Most defensibility problems in electronics PCFs come from a small set of recurring mistakes. The list below is the set most likely to draw a reviewer’s challenge or force a restatement.
- Comparing a cradle-to-gate result to an OEM full-life-cycle headline. The calculator’s number is manufacturing only; an OEM “carbon footprint” usually includes use and end-of-life. Compare against the EPD’s production slice, never the all-in total.
- Summing the use-phase card into the headline. Use-phase is shown for context and is grid-dependent; folding it into the cradle-to-gate figure mixes two boundaries into one indefensible number.
- Treating cited component constants as measured factors. Battery, IC, memory, display, and PCB intensities are literature and EPD-derived assumptions, flagged in the data-quality meter. Reporting them as platform-verified factors overstates precision.
- Ignoring node when costing logic ICs. A leading-node die carries several times the per-cm² intensity of a mature-node die. Using a single blended IC factor across nodes can swing the largest line by a wide margin.
- Defaulting enclosure metal to primary without checking. Primary versus recycled aluminium differs by roughly 40× per kilogram. The recycled-content lever is only captured if the correct material factor is selected.
- Claiming an end-of-life or WEEE credit. The cradle-to-gate boundary excludes end-of-life entirely; the engine applies no recovery credit. A negative end-of-life line does not belong in this footprint.
- Mixing GWP bases inside one total. Component constants, materials, and grid/freight factors must all sit on one declared GWP basis. AR5 and AR6 values must not be summed together.
- Omitting the functional unit and assembly geography. “One device” and the assembly grid region are part of the declaration. A PCF without a stated functional unit and boundary cannot be reconciled by a third party.
Data Sources, Factor Provenance, and Data-Quality Tiering
Provenance — Two Streams
The calculator draws on two clearly-separated sources of value. The dominant component lines are engine constants cited to external literature and EPDs: battery intensities from IVL 2019 (Emilsson & Dahllöf) and Argonne GREET 2023; logic-IC intensities from Boyd 2011 and imec.netzero 2023; memory medians decomposed from OEM EPDs; display intensities from Hischier and OEM EPDs; and PCB intensities from ecoinvent and IPC. The tail lines read live MasterBrain rows: enclosure metals and polymers, packaging, and grid electricity, current at MasterBrain v2026.110. Freight uses DEFRA-derived per-tonne-kilometre defaults applied by the engine.
How Uncertainty Is Expressed
There is no published per-factor uncertainty table for these component intensities, and the calculator does not invent one. Instead it expresses confidence three ways. First, a data-quality meter shows the share of the result coming from primary data, secondary data, literature-grade component constants, and spend-based screening. Second, a “percent literature components” honesty chip surfaces how much of the footprint rests on cited assumptions rather than verified factors. Third, the cradle-to-gate benchmark bands by device class act as a total-level sanity range. A result that sits well outside its class band is a prompt to re-check the bill of materials, not a number to report as-is.
Version and Update Behaviour
The MasterBrain-backed tail factors move with the data layer; the engine reads them live, so a MasterBrain version bump that changes a grid or materials value changes the rendered result without any edit to this page. The cited component constants are engine version-stamped (v1.0.0) and change only when the engine is revised. Always read the live headline from the calculator and stamp any quoted figure with the engine and MasterBrain version, because the two streams update on different cadences.
Frequently Asked Questions
No — it gives the cradle-to-gate manufacturing footprint: everything embodied in building the device, up to the assembly gate. It does not include the use phase or end-of-life. The use phase is computed separately and shown in its own card but never added to the headline. For a full cradle-to-grave figure, use the ISO 14067 cradle-to-grave calculator.
Because they are different boundaries. An OEM headline figure is usually the full life cycle — production, transport, use, and end-of-life combined. This calculator returns cradle-to-gate manufacturing only. To compare like with like, take the production or manufacturing slice from the manufacturer’s Environmental Product Declaration and set it against this calculator’s number.
Two reasons: wafer fabrication is extremely energy-intensive, and it uses perfluorinated process gases with very high global warming potentials. Intensity rises as the process node shrinks, so a leading-node die can carry several times the embodied carbon per square centimetre of a mature-node die. Die area times node intensity is usually the single largest line in a phone or laptop footprint.
No. The dominant components — battery, logic and memory ICs, display, and bare PCB — have no MasterBrain coverage, so the engine uses cited literature and EPD-derived constants, each flagged as a literature-grade assumption in the data-quality meter. Only the tail lines — enclosure metals and polymers, packaging, and grid electricity — read live MasterBrain factors.
A large amount per kilogram. Primary aluminium sits near 10.1 kg CO2e/kg while recycled secondary aluminium is around 0.26 kg CO2e/kg — roughly a 40× difference, both live MasterBrain materials values. For a metal-bodied device, choosing recycled enclosure aluminium can remove tens of kilograms of CO2e from the cradle-to-gate total, and because it is a distinct selectable factor the saving is fully auditable.
Because the embodied-versus-use-phase split is inverted. A phone draws almost no electricity over its life, so its footprint is overwhelmingly embodied. A server runs continuously for years at high power, so its use-phase electricity usually dominates the life-cycle total despite a heavy embodied footprint. For servers the grid factor and the data-centre PUE multiplier matter far more than for any consumer device.
No. End-of-life and WEEE recovery are outside the cradle-to-gate boundary, and the engine applies no recovery credit. Recycling is reflected only at the input side, through the option to select recycled rather than primary material factors. End-of-life recovery and recycling are governed separately under standards such as R2v3.
ISO 14067 is the primary standard, building on the ISO 14040/14044 LCA principles, with the GHG Protocol Product Standard as the co-governing framework. The EU Product Environmental Footprint method is relevant for EU-market declarations, and the WBCSD Pathfinder Framework governs how product-level PCF data is exchanged between suppliers in a value chain.
Methodology Notes and Limitations
Cradle-to-gate boundary only. The headline is embodied manufacturing emissions to the assembly gate. Distribution beyond the first freight leg, the use phase, and end-of-life are out of scope for the reported figure; the use phase is computed and displayed for context but never summed in.
Dominant lines are cited literature, not MasterBrain. Battery, logic/memory IC, display, and PCB intensities are engine constants cited to external sources and flagged in the data-quality meter. They are user assumptions, not platform-verified factors, and must be reported as such.
Live tail factors move with the data layer. Enclosure metals and polymers, packaging, and grid electricity read live MasterBrain rows current at MasterBrain v2026.110; a data-layer bump can change the result without a page edit. Quote figures with both the engine version and the MasterBrain version.
No co-product allocation and no recycled-content blend. There is no allocation control. Recycled content is handled by selecting the recycled rather than primary material factor, not by entering a percentage.
Benchmark bands are a sanity range, not an output. The per-device cradle-to-gate bands (smartphone 40–90, laptop 150–450, server 1,000–3,500 kg CO2e) are cited literature ranges for cross-checking a computed result, not values the calculator returns and not comparable to an OEM full-life-cycle headline.
Tier 1 / literature-grade data. Results are screening-to-intermediate quality. For a device material to corporate disclosure or for an external PCF claim, move material component lines toward primary supplier or verified-EPD data and have the inventory reviewed by a qualified LCA practitioner before use.
Once you have the embodied footprint, the next questions are the use phase and the value-chain accounting it rolls up into.