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Greenhouse gas accounting and scope 1–3

A greenhouse gas inventory measures emissions in CO2-equivalents, where all greenhouse gases are converted to the amount of CO2 that gives the same warming effect. Emissions are split into scope 1 (direct, own sources), scope 2 (purchased energy), and scope 3 (the rest of the value chain, both upstream and downstream).

scope 1+scope 2+scope 3=total carbon footprint\text{scope 1} + \text{scope 2} + \text{scope 3} = \text{total carbon footprint}the three emission categories

Example

For a car manufacturer, fuel at their own factory is scope 1, purchased electricity is scope 2, and emissions from cars' use phase at customers is scope 3.

Scope 3 is often by far the largest and hardest category to measure accurately.
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