A new local one-stop for emission factors

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??This week: The Singapore Business Federation (SBF) has launched a free registry of localised emission factors, giving companies a new tool to help calculate their greenhouse gas impact.

It’s a fairly basic start but an important step towards enabling more comprehensive and more accurate climate reporting among Singapore businesses.

The registry, at NetZeroHub.sg, compiles 200 emission factors from four government agencies – national water agency PUB, the Energy Market Authority (EMA), the National Environment Agency (NEA) and the Ministry of Transport (MOT) – and the Singapore Green Building Council industry group.

Emission factors are average rates at which a given activity generates greenhouse gases and are fundamental inputs used to calculate emissions. For example, the Singapore electrical grid had an emission factor of 0.42 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent greenhouse gases for every kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity produced in 2022. A company that used 1,000 kWh of electricity in Singapore that year could, therefore, figure out that its purchased electricity generated 420 kg of emissions in 2022 by multiplying the grid emission factor by 1,000.

The move comes ahead of mandatory sustainability reporting for Singapore’s listed and large non-listed companies. While there is currently no firm timeline for a similar requirement for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), some SMEs may decide to account for their emissions to meet the requirements of large customers and lenders trying to decarbonise their supply chains.

One benefit of a one-stop portal is that it can significantly reduce the resources needed to find and update emission factors because national emission factors are calculated by different agencies and ministries depending on which entity has the required data and jurisdiction. For instance, a Singapore manufacturer might need to get the emission factor for water usage from PUB, for electricity from EMA and for burning diesel from NEA. Compiling the factors in one platform and ensuring they are up-to-date makes the process much easier.

Encouragingly, the portal is a public-private collaboration with a roadmap for improvement. SBF has said that emission factors for logistics, information communication and technology, cleaning and security services are planned for 2025.

A comprehensive database of localised emission factors will improve the accuracy of emissions reporting in Singapore because the carbon footprint of different activities can vary depending on local conditions. Without localised factors, companies need to rely on international averages that might not match local realities.

For instance, average emissions for bus trips can vary widely depending on the fuel mix of the local bus fleet, the efficiency of the bus models and the occupancy of the buses. In larger and denser cities, where there are more passengers on buses on average, the emissions produced by the buses can be shared by more commuters, leading to lower emission factors for bus travel on an emissions per passenger kilometre basis.

Indeed, in Britain, local bus travel outside of London has an emission factor of 0.13 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent per passenger kilometre. However, within London, local bus travel has an emission factor almost half of that, at 0.07 kg per passenger kilometre. Singapore’s bus travel emission factor is comparable to that of London.

Accuracy is important. As companies and the Singapore government pursue their respective climate goals, they will need reliable data about their impact in order to build effective decarbonisation strategies. Trying to achieve those targets with bad data would be like driving in a fog.

To that end, there is room to improve the existing emission factors by providing greater granularity. For example, MOT provides one single factor for bus travel, even though buses can come in significantly different sizes with distinctly different emission factors. A double-decker bus won’t have the same factor as a nine-seater mini-bus, for instance.

As the barrier to calculating emissions lowers, the stakeholders behind the portal can also look into encouraging greater transparency about emissions from businesses. Perhaps companies can begin to provide emissions numbers along with the goods and services they provide, such as trip emissions on airline boarding passes or taxi receipts or product emissions on retail receipts. Such information will not only greatly improve Scope 3 reporting but also raise community awareness about emissions and climate action.

??Top ESG reads:

1. GIC could sell its 50 per cent stake in Indian renewable energy company Greenko Energy foir around US$5 billion, Bloomberg reports..
2. Singapore’s National Climate Change Secretariat has launched a public consultation on the nation’s decarbonisation plans ahead of coming updates to official climate targets.
3. Singapore can’t choose to forgo a carbon tax and still hope to fix the climate crisis, writes BT's Sharon See.
4. A proposed one-year delay in Europe’s import ban on products linked to deforestation will give small farmers in Malaysia time to comply, says Malaysia’s Plantation and Commodities Minister.
5. China’s economic stimulus has fueled a surge in electric vehicle sales during the recent Golden Week holiday.

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