Use of Sold Products Emissions
A company stops controlling a product the moment it leaves the shelf — but the product keeps emitting. A boiler burns gas for fifteen winters; a car burns fuel for a decade; a barrel of crude is refined and combusted by someone the producer will never meet. The GHG Protocol assigns the lifetime of that emitting to the company that sold the product, and books it all in the year of the sale.
Scope 3 Category 11 is usually the largest number on the page — and the one built almost entirely from assumptions.
Scope 3 Category 11 covers emissions from the use of a company’s sold products over their lifetime. Direct use-phase emissions — energy the product consumes or GHGs it emits in use — are required; indirect use is recommended. The full expected lifetime is booked in the year of sale.
This page is the citation-grade treatment of Scope 3 Category 11 — emissions from the use of products sold by the reporting company, as defined in the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard. It covers the distinction between required direct use-phase emissions and recommended indirect ones, the lifetime multiplier and the year-of-sale booking convention that make this category so often misunderstood, the three product sub-cases (energy-consuming products, sold fuels and feedstocks, and products containing greenhouse gases), the boundary that separates Category 11 from Category 10 (processing of sold products), and three hardcoded worked examples reconciling against the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard. Like Category 10, Category 11 has no dedicated emission factor: the figure is composed from use-phase energy and product-refrigerant primitives, and most of its uncertainty lives in the use-profile assumptions, not the factors.
What Category 11 Covers
Category 11 captures the emissions generated when end users operate, consume, or otherwise use the final products a company sold, across the products’ expected lifetime. It is the use phase of the product life cycle, sitting after the product reaches its final form and before its disposal — which belongs to Category 12, end-of-life treatment.
The category covers three broad kinds of emitting in use: products that consume energy while operating (vehicles, appliances, electronics, heating equipment); fuels and feedstocks that are themselves combusted or transformed (the dominant case for energy producers); and products that contain and release greenhouse gases during use (refrigerants, fire suppressants, propellants). What is excluded is anything that happens after use ends — disposal, recycling, and landfill emissions are Category 12 — and any emissions from the company’s own operations, which remain in its Scope 1 and Scope 2.
Category 11 is the use phase of a final product. If the product still requires processing before use, the downstream processing is Category 10, not Category 11. If the emitting happens at disposal rather than in use, it is Category 12. Category 11 is bounded on one side by the product reaching final form and on the other by the product reaching end of life.
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Where Cat 11 Sits in the Scope 3 Boundary
Category 11 is a downstream category covering emissions the reporting company influences through product design but does not control in operation. Reading it correctly means placing it against the category immediately upstream of it — Category 10 — and against the end user’s own inventory.
| Category | Product state | Which emissions | Whose inventory also carries them |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cat 10 — Processing of sold products | Intermediate (not yet final) | Third-party processing into final form | The processor’s Cat 1 |
| Cat 11 — Use of sold products | Final product, in use | Operation / consumption over lifetime | The end user’s Scope 1 / Scope 2 |
| Cat 12 — End-of-life treatment | Final product, discarded | Disposal, recycling, landfill | The waste handler’s Scope 1 |
The Category 10 / Category 11 boundary is the final-form test, read from the use side: if the thing sold still has to be processed by someone else before anyone uses it, its downstream processing is Category 10; once it is in its final, usable form, its operation is Category 11. A producer who sells a finished appliance has Category 11 (it is used) and no Category 10 (no further processing). A producer who sells billet has Category 10 (it is processed into something) and no Category 11 for the billet itself. The same company can have both — for different products.
The emissions an end user generates by using your product are your Category 11 and the user’s own Scope 1 or Scope 2 — that across-inventory overlap is intended by the GHG Protocol and is not an error. The error to avoid is booking the end user’s use-phase emissions into your own Scope 1, or counting the same product’s use both in Category 11 and somewhere else in your Scope 3.
Category 11 is the category most likely to dominate a product company’s footprint and most likely to be screened out incorrectly. For makers of energy-consuming goods and producers of fuels, it routinely exceeds Scopes 1 and 2 combined by an order of magnitude or more. The Scope 3 Standard requires the category to be evaluated for relevance; for these businesses, screening it out is rarely defensible.
Direct vs Indirect Use-Phase Emissions
The Scope 3 Standard splits Category 11 into two tiers with different reporting obligations. Getting the split right determines what must be reported and what is optional.
| Type | Definition | Examples | Reporting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Direct use-phase | The product itself consumes energy or directly emits GHGs when used | A car burning fuel; an appliance drawing electricity; a refrigerant leaking from an air conditioner | Required |
| Indirect use-phase | The product causes energy use or emissions but does not consume or emit directly | A garment that requires washing; a food product that requires cooking; a part that consumes energy only as installed in a host product | Recommended (optional) |
Direct use-phase emissions must be reported wherever they are relevant: these are the emissions intrinsic to operating the product as designed. Indirect use-phase emissions — where the product enables or necessitates energy use without itself consuming it — are recommended but not mandatory, because the reporting company has weaker influence over them and the estimate depends on consumer behaviour the company cannot observe. A detergent maker is not required to count the electricity of every wash, but is encouraged to where it is material and estimable.
The required/recommended line is about influence and attributability, not size. An indirect figure can be large (the cooking energy of a staple food across millions of households) yet remain optional because the company neither controls nor can reliably measure it. When an indirect estimate is reported, disclose it separately from the direct figure and state the behavioural assumptions behind it, so a reader can see which part of the total rests on consumer behaviour.
The Calculation Architecture and the Lifetime Multiplier
Category 11 multiplies the units a company sold in the reporting year by the emissions each unit will generate across its entire expected lifetime. This is the rule that makes Category 11 unlike any earlier category: it books a product’s whole future operating life as a single figure in the year of sale.
| The Category 11 master equation |
|---|
| Cat 11 emissions = Σ ( units sold in year × lifetime emissions per unit ) |
| lifetime emissions per unit = use intensity per use × uses per year × expected lifetime (years) |
| where use intensity = energy emissions per use + direct GHG release per use |
Why the whole lifetime, in the year of sale
The convention exists so that a year’s inventory reflects the full downstream consequence of that year’s sales, and so that emissions are not deferred indefinitely or lost when a product outlives the reporting company’s tracking. A company that sells one million boilers in a year records the entire fifteen-year operating footprint of those boilers in that year’s Category 11 — not one-fifteenth per year for the next fifteen years. This makes Category 11 volatile with sales volume and sensitive to the assumed lifetime, and it means a single revision to an expected-lifetime assumption can move the reported total substantially.
Do not amortise Category 11 across the years of use, and do not re-book the same products’ use in later years. The full expected-lifetime emissions of products sold in the reporting year are recorded once, in that year. Spreading them forward, or counting a product’s use again in a subsequent inventory, both break the year-of-sale convention and distort year-on-year comparability.
Expected lifetime, not actual
Because the products have not yet been used when the figure is booked, the lifetime, the use intensity, and the uses-per-year are all expected values — engineering estimates of how the product will be used, drawn from design specifications, product testing, or industry use profiles. None of them is a measured emission factor, and none is resident in any factor library. They are the company’s own assumptions, and they are where almost all of the category’s uncertainty lives.
Composing the Factor — There Is No Cat 11 Keyspace
As with Category 10, there is no single “use of sold products” emission factor anywhere. A search for a use-phase factor returns nothing, because Category 11 is an accounting re-attribution of ordinary use-phase energy and product-GHG emissions. The intensity term is composed from resident primitives; only the use-profile multipliers are the company’s own.
| Component | What it captures | Source primitive | Live value (illustrative primitives) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Use-phase energy — fuel | Fuel a product burns in use (a vehicle, a boiler) | DEFRA / EPA / IPCC fuel factors | Natural gas: 2.02633 kg CO₂e/kWh |
| Use-phase energy — electricity | Grid power a product draws in use (an appliance, an EV) | Country grid factors (location-based) | GB grid: 0.131 kg CO₂e/kWh |
| Product GHG release | Refrigerant or F-gas leaking from the product over its life | Refrigerant leak GWPs (AR6 / EU F-Gas) | R-134a: 1530; R-410A: 2256; R-1234yf: 0.501 kg CO₂e/kg leaked |
| GWP roll-up | Converting any directly-emitted CH₄ / N₂O to CO₂e | IPCC AR6 GWP-100 | CH₄ (fossil): 29.8; N₂O: 273 |
The energy side
For energy-consuming products, the use-phase intensity composes from the same primitives as any Scope 2 electricity or stationary combustion calculation: grid factor for electricity drawn, fuel factor for fuel burnt. Fuel factors are resident for UK DEFRA, US EPA, and the IPCC 2006 universal defaults; grid factors are resident per country on a location-based basis. A complete energy-side intensity multiplies the per-use energy by the appropriate factor — then the lifetime multiplier turns per-use into per-lifetime.
The product-GHG side
Products that contain refrigerants or other F-gases leak them gradually in use, and that leakage is a direct use-phase emission. The leak GWPs are resident in the refrigerants keyspace — fifty-one gases drawn from IPCC AR6 and the EU F-Gas Regulation, expressed as kg CO₂e per kilogram leaked. The product-GHG term multiplies the gas’s leak GWP by the mass leaked over the product’s life (initial charge × annual leak rate × lifetime, plus any end-of-life loss attributable to use). The arithmetic of the leak itself follows the refrigerant leakage mass-balance method; Category 11 applies it across the sold population’s expected life.
The refrigerant choice is one of the largest levers a product designer holds over Category 11. The resident leak GWPs span four orders of magnitude — a legacy high-GWP blend against a low-GWP HFO — so substituting the gas can move the product-GHG term of Category 11 by thousands of times, independent of any change in leak rate. Where a product contains an F-gas, the gas selected dominates this part of the figure.
The Three Product Sub-Cases
Category 11 looks different depending on what the product does in use. Three sub-cases cover the great majority of real inventories, each with its own dominant term.
1 · Energy-consuming products
Vehicles, appliances, electronics, HVAC, machinery. The use-phase energy dominates: per-use energy × uses per year × lifetime × units sold, valued at the grid or fuel factor. The key judgements are expected lifetime, use intensity, and which grid factor applies over the product’s life.
2 · Fuels and feedstocks sold
For energy producers, Category 11 is the combustion of the fuel they sold — the single largest category by far. The emissions are the full combustion of the sold quantity, valued at the fuel’s combustion factor. The whole sold volume’s combustion is booked, regardless of who burns it.
3 · GHG-containing products
Refrigeration, air conditioning, fire suppression, aerosols. The dominant term is the F-gas leaked over the product’s life: leak GWP × mass leaked. The gas selected can swing the figure by orders of magnitude; the leak rate and lifetime set the rest.
A single product can combine sub-cases — a refrigerated vehicle consumes fuel (sub-case 1) and leaks refrigerant (sub-case 3) — and the Category 11 figure for it is the sum of the two terms. The point of separating them is that each has a different dominant lever and a different dominant uncertainty.
For a fuel or feedstock producer, Category 11 is the use-phase combustion of the product sold, and it typically dwarfs every other category in the inventory. This is the case where Category 11 is least optional and most material: the entire downstream combustion of a year’s sold fuel is the company’s Category 11 for that year.
Use-Profile Assumptions and Sensitivity
Because the factors are resident primitives and the multipliers are the company’s own estimates, Category 11’s accuracy is governed by the use profile, not the emission factors. The same product sold into two markets, used at two intensities, over two assumed lifetimes, produces two very different figures from identical factors.
Three assumptions carry most of the sensitivity. The expected lifetime scales the whole figure linearly — doubling the assumed life doubles the booked emissions. The use intensity (energy per use, uses per year) does the same. And for energy-consuming products with long lives, the grid factor over the product’s life matters: a product used for fifteen years will see the grid decarbonise, so a static present-day grid factor overstates the later years. The Scope 3 Standard permits, and good practice increasingly favours, projecting grid decarbonisation across the use period rather than holding today’s factor flat — though doing so introduces its own scenario dependence that must be disclosed.
Do not present a Category 11 figure as precise when its inputs are assumptions. State the expected lifetime, the use intensity, and whether the grid factor is held static or projected. A figure built on a fifteen-year life and a flat present-day grid is defensible only if those choices are disclosed; silently changing them between reporting periods produces a movement that looks like a real reduction but is an assumption change.
Worked Examples — Audit Records
Three audit-record snapshots, one per sub-case. All inputs and results are hardcoded illustrative audit records: they reconcile to their stated inputs and must continue to reconcile regardless of future data-layer changes. Figures are illustrative and do not represent any specific named product or company. The emission factors are live resident primitives where shown; every use-profile figure — lifetime, annual use, leak rate — is an explicit illustrative assumption, because no such value exists in any factor library.
Example A — energy-consuming product (electric appliance, lifetime × grid)
| Example A — 100,000 electric appliances sold in the reporting year | Value |
|---|---|
| Units sold in year | 100,000 |
| Annual electricity use per unit (illustrative assumption) | 200 kWh / yr |
| Expected lifetime (illustrative assumption) | 12 years |
| Grid factor (GB, location-based, DEFRA 2026, held static) | 0.13096 kg CO₂e / kWh |
| Lifetime energy per unit = 200 × 12 | 2,400 kWh |
| Lifetime emissions per unit = 2,400 × 0.13096 | 314.3 kg CO₂e |
| Category 11 total = 100,000 × 314.3 ÷ 1,000 | 31,430 t CO₂e |
The grid factor (0.13096 kg CO₂e/kWh) is the live GB primitive; the annual use and the twelve-year lifetime are explicit illustrative assumptions, flagged because no resident factor carries a product’s use profile. Holding the grid factor static across twelve years overstates the later years if the grid decarbonises — a sensitivity the §7 discussion covers. The whole twelve-year footprint of this year’s 100,000 units is booked now, per the year-of-sale convention.
Example B — fuel sold (use-phase combustion)
| Example B — natural gas sold to end users for combustion | Value |
|---|---|
| Natural gas sold in year (illustrative) | 500,000,000 kWh |
| Natural gas combustion factor (DEFRA 2026) | 0.18231 kg CO₂e / kWh |
| Category 11 = 500,000,000 × 0.18231 ÷ 1,000 | 91,155 t CO₂e |
For a fuel sold for combustion, the entire sold volume’s combustion is the Category 11 figure — no lifetime multiplier is needed because the fuel is consumed in a single use. The factor (0.18231 kg CO₂e/kWh) is the live DEFRA natural-gas primitive; the sold volume is illustrative. This is the sub-case where Category 11 is least uncertain (the factor is a measured combustion value) yet most material (it is the producer’s largest category by a wide margin).
Example C — GHG-containing product (refrigerant leak over life)
| Example C — 50,000 air-conditioning units sold, R-410A charge | Value |
|---|---|
| Units sold in year | 50,000 |
| Refrigerant charge per unit (illustrative assumption) | 1.2 kg R-410A |
| Annual leak rate (illustrative assumption) | 5% of charge / yr |
| Expected lifetime (illustrative assumption) | 10 years |
| R-410A leak GWP (IPCC AR6) | 2,256 kg CO₂e / kg leaked |
| Lifetime leaked per unit = 1.2 × 5% × 10 | 0.6 kg |
| Lifetime emissions per unit = 0.6 × 2,256 | 1,353.6 kg CO₂e |
| Category 11 total = 50,000 × 1,353.6 ÷ 1,000 | 67,680 t CO₂e |
The leak GWP (2,256 kg CO₂e/kg for R-410A) is the live resident refrigerant primitive; the charge, leak rate, and lifetime are illustrative assumptions. Substituting a low-GWP HFO such as R-1234yf (leak GWP 0.501) in place of R-410A would cut this term by a factor of roughly four and a half thousand with no change to charge, leak rate, or lifetime — the §5 point about the gas selection being the dominant lever, shown arithmetically. The leak follows the mass-balance method; Category 11 applies it across the sold population.
The three examples are different sub-cases, not interchangeable estimates of one quantity. Example B’s factor is a measured combustion value; Examples A and C rest heavily on use-profile assumptions. Disclose, for each material slice of the Category 11 figure, which sub-case it is and which assumptions drive it — an appliance figure and a fuel figure carry very different uncertainty even when the tonnages are similar.
Edge Cases and Known Pitfalls
Amortising the lifetime across years
The full expected-lifetime emissions of products sold this year are booked this year, not spread across the use period. Amortising forward, or re-counting the same products’ use in later inventories, breaks the year-of-sale convention and distorts year-on-year comparison.
Intermediate mistaken for final product
If the product still needs processing before use, its downstream processing is Category 10, not Category 11. Booking an intermediate’s “use” into Cat 11 misplaces emissions that belong in Cat 10 — read the final-form boundary from the use side.
Reporting indirect use as if required
Only direct use-phase emissions are mandatory. Indirect ones are recommended and depend on consumer behaviour the company cannot observe. Mixing the two without separating them, or treating an indirect estimate as a hard figure, overstates precision.
Hunting for a “use-phase” factor that doesn’t exist
There is no dedicated use-of-sold-products emission factor. The intensity is composed from energy and refrigerant primitives, and the multipliers are the company’s own use-profile assumptions. Searching a factor library for a turnkey Cat 11 value returns nothing.
Static grid factor over a long-lived product
A product used for a decade or more will see the grid decarbonise. Holding today’s grid factor flat across the whole life overstates the later years. Where lifetime is long, consider projecting grid evolution and disclose the basis either way.
Refrigerant GWP basis or gas misread
Leak GWPs span four orders of magnitude and differ between AR5 and AR6. Use the AR6 leak GWP for corporate reporting, key the correct gas, and remember the gas selection — not the leak rate — usually dominates the product-GHG term.
Own-operation emissions booked into Cat 11
The end user’s use-phase emissions are Category 11; the company’s own operational emissions are Scope 1 and 2. The across-inventory overlap with the user’s own scopes is expected; folding the company’s own operations into Cat 11 is not.
Assumption change presented as a reduction
Because the figure scales linearly with lifetime and use intensity, revising an assumption moves the total. A movement driven by a changed lifetime or use profile is not an emissions reduction; disclose assumption changes separately from real performance changes.
Governance, Assurance, and Disclosure
Category 11 rolls up into the company’s Scope 3 total and into disclosures under frameworks such as CSRD ESRS E1 and IFRS S2. Because it is usually large and built on assumptions, an assurance reviewer scrutinises the use profile and the booking convention as closely as the factors. Run the following pre-flight before submitting a Category 11 figure for assurance.
- Final-form boundary held. Each product in Category 11 is a final product in use; intermediates requiring processing are in Category 10, and disposal is in Category 12.
- Direct vs indirect separated. Required direct use-phase emissions are reported; any indirect estimate is reported separately with its behavioural assumptions stated.
- Year-of-sale convention applied. The full expected-lifetime emissions of products sold in the reporting year are booked once, in that year — not amortised or re-counted.
- Use-profile assumptions documented. Expected lifetime, use intensity, and uses-per-year are stated, with their basis (design spec, testing, industry profile).
- Composition primitives cited. Energy factors (fuel, grid) and refrigerant leak GWPs are cited to source and edition; no “use-phase factor” is invented.
- Grid treatment disclosed. Whether the grid factor is held static or projected across the product life is stated, with the projection basis if used.
- Refrigerant basis and gas correct. Leak GWPs use AR6 for corporate reporting and the correct gas; the product-GHG term reconciles to the mass-balance leak method.
- Units reconciled. Per-kWh energy factors, per-kg leak GWPs, and per-litre fuel factors are each applied to the matching denominator with explicit conversion.
- Assumption changes flagged. Any movement driven by a revised lifetime or use profile is disclosed separately from real performance change.
- Screening justification retained. If Category 11 is excluded as immaterial, the rationale is recorded — rarely defensible for makers of energy-consuming goods or producers of fuels.
The three assurance findings most specific to Category 11 are amortising lifetime emissions instead of booking them in the year of sale, presenting an assumption change (lifetime, use intensity, grid) as a real reduction, and reporting indirect use-phase emissions as if they were the required direct figure. Lock all three in the methodology note: book the full lifetime at sale, separate assumption changes from performance, and keep direct and indirect distinct.
What the Calculator Handles vs What You Decide
A calculator automates the lifetime arithmetic and the roll-up across product lines. It cannot make the classification and use-profile judgements that determine whether the figure is right.
The calculator handles
Multiplying use intensity by uses-per-year, lifetime, and units sold; composing energy and product-GHG terms into a per-unit lifetime intensity; rolling up across product lines; applying a static or projected grid factor across the life; converting units between per-kWh, per-kg, and per-litre bases; and producing an audit trail of each factor and assumption used.
You decide
Whether the product is final (Cat 11) or an intermediate (Cat 10); whether emissions are direct (required) or indirect (optional); the expected lifetime, use intensity, and uses-per-year; whether the grid is held static or projected; which refrigerant and leak rate apply; and that own-operation emissions stay out of the category.
Compose a Category 11 estimate across product lines — energy-consuming products, sold fuels, and GHG-containing products — with use-phase energy and refrigerant primitives, the lifetime multiplier, and a full audit trail.
Standards Alignment
Five standards govern Category 11 and the factors composed into it.
| Standard | Role for this methodology |
|---|---|
| GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard | Defines Category 11, the direct/indirect distinction, the lifetime and year-of-sale convention, the three product sub-cases, and the relevance/screening requirement. The methodological foundation of the page. |
| GHG Protocol Corporate Standard | Defines the company’s own Scope 1 + Scope 2 boundary, against which use-phase emissions are separated — the line that keeps the end user’s operation out of the company’s direct emissions. |
| IPCC AR6 | Source of the GWP-100 values used to convert directly-emitted CH₄ and N₂O, and the basis for the refrigerant leak GWPs that drive the product-GHG sub-case. |
| UK DEFRA Emission Factors | Source of the use-phase fuel and UK grid factors composed into the energy term (AR5 GWP-100 basis, per the DEFRA convention). |
| EU F-Gas Regulation 2024 | Source and regulatory context for several refrigerant leak GWPs; the phase-down it drives is why low-GWP gas selection is the dominant lever on the product-GHG term. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Category 11 covers the emissions generated when end users use a company’s sold products over their expected lifetime. It captures the use phase of the product life cycle — energy the product consumes, fuel it combusts, or greenhouse gases it releases in operation — attributed to the company that sold the product.
Category 10 is the processing of an intermediate product into its final form; Category 11 is the use of the final product. If the product still needs processing before anyone uses it, that processing is Cat 10; once it is in final, usable form, its operation is Cat 11. A company can have both, for different products.
Direct use-phase emissions are those the product itself produces in use — energy it consumes, fuel it burns, or GHGs it releases — and they are required. Indirect use-phase emissions are those the product causes but does not directly produce, such as the electricity to run an appliance the product depends on; these are recommended but optional.
So a year’s inventory reflects the full downstream consequence of that year’s sales. The entire expected-lifetime emissions of products sold in the reporting year are recorded once, in that year — not spread across the years of use. This makes Category 11 sensitive to sales volume and to the assumed lifetime.
No. There is no dedicated use-of-sold-products factor in the GHG Protocol, DEFRA, or any factor library. The Category 11 intensity is composed from use-phase energy primitives (fuel and grid factors) and product-GHG primitives (refrigerant leak GWPs), multiplied by the company’s own use-profile assumptions.
Because it captures a product’s entire operating life. For makers of energy-consuming goods and especially for fuel producers — whose Category 11 is the full combustion of the fuel they sold — the use phase routinely exceeds Scopes 1 and 2 combined by an order of magnitude or more.
A product containing an F-gas leaks it gradually in use, a direct use-phase emission. The term is the gas’s leak GWP (kg CO₂e per kg leaked) multiplied by the mass leaked over the product’s life — charge × leak rate × lifetime. Leak GWPs span four orders of magnitude, so the gas selected dominates this part of the figure.
For long-lived energy-consuming products, a static present-day grid factor overstates the later years because the grid decarbonises over time. The Scope 3 Standard permits projecting grid evolution across the use period, and good practice increasingly favours it — but the projection introduces scenario dependence that must be disclosed. State which approach was used either way.
Every company must evaluate it for relevance. For makers of energy-consuming products and producers of fuels it is rarely defensible to screen out, as it usually dominates the footprint. A company whose products consume no energy and release no GHGs in use may have little or no Category 11, but the screening rationale must be recorded.