Recent proposed revisions to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHGP) Scope 2 Guidance may significantly increase the geographic and temporal granularity required for location-based method (LBM) of scope 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions accounting. While these changes are intended to improve accuracy, transparency, and comparability of corporate inventories, they may also introduce unintended internal consistency challenges when applied across regions with overlapping electricity grid boundaries. This white paper examines how the proposed emission factor (EF) hierarchy, particularly the prioritization of subnational and hourly EFs, can result in the overlapping attribution of grid emissions within a single corporate scope 2 inventory. The analysis demonstrates how mechanically applying the most granular accessible EFs at the facility level can lead to double counting of the same underlying generation resources and concludes by outlining practical approaches reporting entities can use to mitigate these double counting risks.
Authors Arin Kaye, et al.