Read a factor page

A factor page shows one emission factor: its value, where it comes from, which years and methods it has values for, what it is made of and how to cite it. Read it from top to bottom; each block answers one question. This page walks through anthracite burned in France, from ADEME. Open it in another tab to follow along.

You reach a factor page by clicking a row in factor search. Factor pages are free and are never metered.

The top line#

Above the title, a line holds:

• ‹ Results, which takes you back to factor search filtered to this library.
• The publisher, the library and its edition.
• The region badge, as a code: FR for France. If the publisher did not state a region and the library's home territory stands in, a small tip says so. See region and publisher default region.
• The licence badge: Open licence, Copyleft licence, Restricted licence or Redistribution prohibited. See licence tier.
• On a part of a larger factor, "part of" followed by a link to the whole. For example, anthracite combustion per kWh is part of the well-to-use factor for the same fuel.

The title is the activity as the publisher names it: here "Anthracite".

The value#

The value is in large type with its unit: 2.86 kgCO₂e/kg. It is kilograms of CO2e per unit of activity, here per kilogram of anthracite. The small tip next to the unit explains the unit basis. Your quantity must be in the same unit.

Next to it, "GWP: AR6 (as published)" names the global warming potentials the publisher used to add the gases together. See GWP as published and GWP.

With a free account, a second, smaller line can show the same value recalculated on another GWP, marked for example "AR6-normalised", when the publisher used an older one. See normalised GWP.

On some factors, a badge under the value marks a computed total: a total that open-climate.ai added up from the parts because the publisher printed only the parts. See derived total, or view all derived factors in factor search.

Watch out. An empty value is not zero. It means the publisher gives no figure, or the value is waiting for the publisher's approval to be published.

The provenance line#

The sentence under the value reads "Published by ADEME in" the library and edition, then the years the value applies to, in brackets, then "last verified" and a date. That date is the fixed Dataset date written into the site itself, the same on every factor page: it records no check of this value, and the licence check carries its own date on the rights card.

• The years. "(2019–)" means from 2019 with no end year yet; "(Any year)" means this is the only edition on record, so the value is not tied to a year. Anthracite reads "(Any year)". See year window.
• The boundary. Not in that sentence any more: the boundary sits above it, as a chip in the row under the title, and the chip is a link back to the list filtered to it. It says which stages of the life cycle the value counts. Anthracite reads "Well-to-use (upstream, burn or generation, network losses)": mining and transporting the coal, and burning it. A small strip on the chip draws the stages covered, and its tip lists what the boundary includes and leaves out. See system boundaries.

The three controls under it are Save this factor, which keeps it in your saved factors, Cite, which jumps to the citation, and Export, which is not active on factor pages yet. To export, use factor search.

Publisher's description#

When the publisher writes a note about the factor, it shows here. Long notes fold; Show more opens them. Read it: it often says what is in or out of the value. Anthracite has no note, so the block is absent.

Whose words they are#

The words are the publisher's own, unless a machine-translated badge sits beside the heading. Then the meaning is the publisher's and the wording is ours: open-climate.ai translated the note automatically so it can be read in the language of the page, and the publisher's original wording stays on the source record. The same badge appears where factor search previews a description, above the text. See text origin.

This is a real slice of what you will read, not an edge case. Among the libraries these docs use for examples, two serve machine-translated English notes: ADEME on 1,380 factors and ÖKOBAUDAT on 5,975. Every other note in those two is the publisher's own English.

Watch out. In a report, an audit trail or a client-facing methodology note, quote a translated note as a translation, or go back to the publisher's own record and quote the original. Never present it as the publisher's wording. To reach the original, open the library's own page and use its Publisher's page button, which goes to the publisher's site for the edition served: ADEME, for example.

A translation is the only origin the factor page badges. Other prose factor search serves carries its origin as a field instead, and Cleaning and normalisation says which field records who wrote what.

Values by year and methodology#

This table has one row per year window and one column per methodology, such as a GWP version. A mark shows the "publisher's default for this year". Use it when your reporting year is not the latest one: take the row whose window covers your year. See methodology and reference year.

Anthracite has a single row, "Any year", and a single column, AR6. Many factors have more: the butane factor in the tutorial has one value up to 2018 and another from 2019.

Note. Without an account, the table shows its shape and the headline value, and locks the other cells. The caption under it says how many more combinations there are, "free with an account". Create free account opens them.

By gas#

The By gas panel lists the gases the publisher reports, by their short code, with each gas's contribution in kgCO₂e and its share of the sum. For anthracite: co2_fossil (fossil carbon dioxide) 2.71, ch4 (methane) 0.139, n2o (nitrous oxide) 0.0109, which make 2.86, and co2_biogenic at 0. See biogenic carbon.

A gas that is not listed is not reported. It is not zero. A gas listed at 0 is a zero the publisher printed. Do not fill a missing gas with a figure from another source.

Decomposition#

The Decomposition panel draws the factor and its parts as one tree, the same tree factor search draws when you unfold a row. Under the title, one sentence says how the parts relate to the whole. For anthracite it reads "These components sum to the parent value.", and the tree has two rows: combustion 2.63 and upstream 0.226.

The bar, the shares and the Σ line#

• The bar above the rows is the whole, cut into one segment per part. Hovering a row brightens its segment and dims the others, so you can see which slice the row stands for.
• A percentage on a row is its share of the whole the panel draws: the factor's own value here, or the root's value on a Group panel (below). Combustion is 92.0%, upstream 7.9%.
• The Σ line under the rows adds the parts up: 2.856 kgCO₂e/kg. Where that sum matches the number the publisher printed, the line says "matches the published total". Where it does not, the line prints the difference instead, here "-0.14% against the published 2.86". Hovering it says why: the publisher's total and its parts are not fully consistent with each other, and open-climate.ai serves both as the publisher states them. The gap is reported, never reconciled away, so decide which of the two you are using and say so.
• Where a part publishes no value, there is no Σ at all, only "Not every part publishes a value, so they are not added up." That is a refusal, not a zero. Do not fill the missing part in from another source.

What adds up, and against what#

Four kinds of row can sit in the tree and they look alike: a label, a number, and in three cases out of four a percentage. Only the first kind adds up, and the percentages do not all share a denominator: a part and an intermediary boundary are both measured against the whole the panel draws, a ⊃ row against the row it is nested under.

A ⊃ row is a narrower figure contained in the number it is nested under, and the panel adds the note "residual not published": the rest of that total is not published as its own part. Read its percentage against that number, not against the line printed above it: the ⊃ rows of a rung are drawn after its parts, so the line directly above one is usually a sibling. A ∥ row is published next to the total and outside its boundary, such as EN 15804 module D on a building product or a recycling credit; on a factor page these rows are lifted out of the tree under their own heading, Credits, reported apart.

The warning "Using parent and children together double-counts." is the rule to remember. Use the total, or the parts, never both. Use the parts when you report Scope 1 and Scope 3 separately. See sums to parent and contained by parent.

Show intermediary boundaries#

Some publishers print the chain as well as the slices: a food product carries a farm-gate total, then a wider gate that contains it and adds one stage, and so on up to the consumer. Those middle totals are intermediary boundaries, and a switch above the tree, Show intermediary boundaries, draws them or folds them away. The switch is offered only on a factor that has one. Anthracite has none, so you will not see it there.

Their percentages are the trap. A part's share is one slice of the whole; a gate's share is cumulative, everything up to that gate, so gates and slices read together do not make 100%. The panel says so under the tree: "Gates are never added together; the slices are." Fold the gates away and what is left are the slices, and the slices are the addends. Parents, children, double counting works a food chain through with numbers.

When the factor is itself a part#

Open a part and the panel is titled Group, not Decomposition. It reads "This factor is one part of Anthracite. The whole group is drawn below, this part lit." and draws the group from its root down with your factor highlighted, so you can see what it belongs to and what its siblings are. Beside the title sits the raw relation token, sums_to_parent or contained_by_parent, with a tip that explains it.

Anthracite burned per kWh is one such page: its 0.356 is one part of a group whose published total is 0.387 kgCO₂e/kWh, next to upstream at 0.0305.

Cite this factor#

At the bottom, Cite this factor shows a one-line citation: the year window, the activity, the publisher, the library and edition, the dataset date, the date you retrieved it, and the page address. Copy citation puts it on your clipboard. Cite a factor shows how to pair it with the library's credit line.

Next#

• Choosing between similar factors: when two pages both look right.
• Cite a factor: the citation and the credit line.
• Check that a decomposition sums to its parent: the same arithmetic, in SQL.
• Glossary: every term the tips on the page explain.