A growing number of electric companies and large corporations in the United States and internationally have adopted aggressive goals to reduce their corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030 and beyond. To assess progress towards achieving these goals, electric companies, their end-use customers, regulators and external stakeholders have a growing interest in accounting for companies' GHG emissions and tracking them over time.
This Technical Brief describes two different approaches that may be used to account for and present corporate GHG emissions data ? source-based and load-based accounting. The information presented here has been drawn from past EPRI research. Source-based accounting is focused on answering the question, How much CO2 (or GHG) does a specific facility or entity emit? Load-based accounting tries to answer the question, How much CO2 (or GHG) emissions are embedded in the electricity delivered to end-use consumers (i.e., the company's load)? This Technical Brief also identifies and describes five approaches electric companies can use to account for and report the GHG emissions associated with the electric power they deliver to their retail end-use customers.
Authors Adam Diamant