Sustainability & Risk / Green Building / Carbon Footprint - Background Data
Calculating Emissions for Stationary Fuel Combustion
Emission factors relate fuel consumption to the amount of greenhouse gas emitted when a specific amount of consumption activity occurs.
The application uses the protocols defined in the Background Data tasks to calculate emissions, unless you specify the emission factor and oxidation factor to use for a particular building on the Building Footprint Details tab when entering consumption data for a building. See Entering Building Footprint Data.
The application uses different factor data for calculating carbon dioxide and for calculating methane and nitrous oxide emissions from on-site stationary fuel combustion. The following describes these differences.
Calculating Emission for Carbon Dioxide
CO2, emission factors obtained from the IPCC protocols are based only on the fuel used, not on fuel technology. To capture more complete data for CO2 emissions, Archibus does not use a single CO2 emission factor for a given fuel, but rather tracks carbon content and oxidation factors that allow for variations by technology.
For carbon dioxide calculations, the factors used to convert consumption activity to carbon dioxide emissions include fuel density, heat content, carbon content, the oxidation factor, and the constant conversion factor (3.67) used to convert carbon to carbon dioxide.
With Archibus calculations, the oxidation factor for carbon dioxide is not assumed to be 1.0, as oxidation factors can vary by fuel technology. For example, some methodologies use an oxidation factor of 0.99 for gasoline engines.
Archibus uses the carbon content values you enter to determine a carbon dioxide emission factor using the following calculation:
CO2 Emission Factor = Carbon Content x Oxidation Factor x 3.67.
where 3.67 is a constant conversion factor used to convert carbon to CO2.
To define the data needed to convert stationary fuel combustion activity to CO2 emissions, you define protocols and data for the following:
Calculating Emissions for Methane and Nitrous Oxide
To define emission factors for methane and nitrous oxide, you define protocols and data for the following: