Scope 1 emissions: fuels, vehicles and refrigerants

Scope 1 is the greenhouse gas your company releases itself. The Corporate Standard defines it as emissions that "occur from sources that are owned or controlled by the company". If you burn it, drive it or leak it, and you own or control the equipment, it is Scope 1.

The four types of direct emissions

The Corporate Standard describes four ways Scope 1 emissions arise:

Most offices, shops and light-industry sites have only stationary combustion, mobile combustion and refrigerant leaks.

Fuels

Use metered or invoiced quantities: kWh of gas from bills, litres from fuel cards or delivery notes. Multiply by the factor for the same fuel and unit. DESNZ 2026 examples (kg CO2e):

Check whether your supplier reports kWh on a gross or net calorific value basis before choosing the factor: for natural gas the two factors differ by about 11%.

Company vehicles

If you have fuel records, use them: litres × fuel factor is more accurate than distance. If you only know distance, use a distance factor for the vehicle type. DESNZ 2026 gives, per km, 0.17265 kg CO2e for an average diesel car, 0.16152 for an average petrol car and 0.25716 for an average diesel van up to 3.5 tonnes.

Battery electric vehicles have a factor of zero in Scope 1 because they burn no fuel; the electricity they use belongs in Scope 2 if you charge them at your sites, or must be estimated separately if charged elsewhere.

Only vehicles you own or control are Scope 1. Employees' own cars used for work are Scope 3 category 6 (business travel).

Refrigerants

Air conditioning, heat pumps and refrigeration equipment slowly leak refrigerant, and many refrigerants are powerful greenhouse gases. Engineers top systems up during servicing, and the amount added is the usual estimate of the amount leaked.

The factor is the gas's global warming potential per kilogram. For the blend R410A, DESNZ 2026 gives 1,924 kg CO2e per kg; for R404A it is 3,943. So a 2 kg top-up of R404A in a cold room is about 7.9 tonnes of CO2e, which is the same as burning roughly 43,000 kWh of natural gas.

Ask your maintenance contractor for a log of kilograms added per system per year. If they record leaks in a different unit or by system charge, convert to mass released before calculating.

Process emissions

Process emissions depend on chemistry rather than fuel, for example CO2 released when limestone is heated to make clinker. They need sector-specific methods and are outside the scope of LCALens's calculators today.

Common mistakes

• Counting electricity as Scope 1. Electricity bought from the grid is Scope 2, even if it runs your boilers or heat pumps.
• Using a life-cycle factor. Factors that include fuel production already contain upstream emissions, which belong in Scope 3 category 3. See category 3.
• Ignoring refrigerants because the kilograms are small. As the example shows, a few kilograms can dominate a small company's Scope 1.

Related

• Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions explained
• Refrigerant and gas converters