Grid Electricity Carbon-Intensity Factors by Country

352 grid electricity carbon-intensity factors by country held in the GreenCalculus MasterBrain, drawn from Ember; US EPA eGRID and 3 further sources. Values are read live from the data layer on every page build, so nothing here is re-typed and nothing can drift from the figures the calculators use. They span 2 units of measurement — 271 of them in kg CO2 per kWh — which is why the spread below is reported per unit and never blended.

Where these factors are used

Scope 2 Electricity Emissions and Scope 2 Market-Based Method set out how factors in this group are applied, and Scope 2 Electricity Calculator and Scope 2 Residual Mix Calculator draw on them directly. The published dataset these rows are drawn from is Grid Electricity Emission Factors by Country (Ember 2025) — Complete Reference Dataset, which carries a DOI for citation.

Which of these numbers do you need?

This family holds two kinds of factor that look alike and are not interchangeable. Using one where the other belongs is the most common way a Scope 2 figure comes out wrong, and the arithmetic gives no hint that anything is amiss.

Location-based (293 factors) is the average intensity of the grid your site physically draws from. It is what the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance requires every reporter to disclose, regardless of what they have contracted for, and it is the number to use if you are reporting only once. 212 of these come from Ember, 80 from US EPA eGRID subregions and states, and one from DEFRA.

Residual mix (58 factors) is what is left in the pool once other buyers have claimed the renewable generation through contractual instruments. It belongs in the market-based total, and only when you hold no supplier-specific factor and no instrument of your own — using it as a general grid average double-counts the renewables somebody else has already claimed. The European values come from the AIB, the US values from Green-e.

If you hold contractual instruments, neither column is your market-based answer: that comes from the instrument, and these rows cover the residual consumption around it.

Two units, and why they are not comparable

271 of these factors are in kg CO₂ and 81 in kg CO₂e. That is not a formatting inconsistency — it reflects what each publisher measures. Ember reports power-sector carbon dioxide only, with no methane or nitrous oxide decomposition published, while EPA eGRID reports full carbon dioxide equivalent. A CO₂-only figure is therefore slightly lower than the CO₂e figure for the same grid would be, and ranking one against the other compares different quantities. Sort and compare within a unit, not across.

One consequence worth naming: a value of zero does not mean electricity without consequence. The Central African Republic reads 0.000 because its power sector is effectively all hydro and the figure counts fossil carbon dioxide only. Life-cycle emissions from building and maintaining that generation are real and sit outside this boundary.

What this group contains

Figures are computed per unit and never blended: a median across different units would be arithmetically valid and physically meaningless.

What has changed

Change history is reconstructed from every released edition of the data layer, v2025.13 to v2026.107. A factor absent from this table has held the same value throughout. A change shown as a dash moved off zero, where a percentage has no meaning.

Sources, citation & machine access

Cite the upstream publisher for the values themselves. The reference below credits this compilation and, more usefully, pins the edition you read.

Say, Jeremiah (2026). Grid Electricity Carbon-Intensity Factors by Country (MasterBrain v2026.110). GreenCalculus. https://greencalculus.com/factors/grid-electricity-carbon-intensity-factors/

Cite this factor group

Values change between editions. Quoting the MasterBrain version is what lets a reader resolve the exact number you used — see the change record above for factors in this group that have moved.

For a reference manager — BibTeX, then RIS:

@misc{greencalculus_grid_2026,
  author       = {Say, Jeremiah},
  title        = {Grid Electricity Carbon-Intensity Factors by Country},
  year         = {2026},
  howpublished = {GreenCalculus},
  note         = {MasterBrain v2026.110},
  url          = {https://greencalculus.com/factors/grid-electricity-carbon-intensity-factors/}
}

TY  - DATA
AU  - Say, Jeremiah
TI  - Grid Electricity Carbon-Intensity Factors by Country
PY  - 2026
PB  - GreenCalculus
ET  - MasterBrain v2026.110
UR  - https://greencalculus.com/factors/grid-electricity-carbon-intensity-factors/
ER  - 

Every factor on this page is readable from the open endpoint. No key, no signup:

https://greencalculus.com/wp-json/greencalculus/v1/factors/grid

curl -s "https://greencalculus.com/wp-json/greencalculus/v1/factors/grid?limit=500"

import requests
rows = requests.get("https://greencalculus.com/wp-json/greencalculus/v1/factors/grid", params={"limit": 500}).json()["factors"]
print(len(rows), "factors in grid")

Or the same rows as a spreadsheet — every factor with its source, the edition it last changed in, and its own link:

https://greencalculus.com/wp-json/greencalculus/v1/factors-export?page=grid-electricity-carbon-intensity-factors

Download this table as CSV

Both responses carry an X-GC-Version header, so a consumer can detect a new edition without diffing the payload. The CSV filename carries the edition too, so two downloads months apart do not collide.

All factors

Last changed names the data-layer edition in which a factor last took a new value, reconstructed from every released edition since v2025.13. A dash means the value has not moved since tracking began — which is the answer to "is the figure I used last year still current?".

Common questions