Carbon Footprint and Carbon Savings
Carbon Footprint measures the total emissions of a community by correlating the imported electricity with the average CO₂-equivalent emissions of the country of location expressed in kilograms (kg) of CO₂ equivalents per kWh.
Carbon Savings represent the reduction in carbon footprint resulting from a decrease in electricity imports realised by engaging in community energy trading.
The carbon footprint value is calculated as follows:
Carbon Footprint (kg CO₂-equivalent) = Imported Electricity (kWh) × Country’s CO₂-equivalent Emissions (kg CO₂-equivalent/kWh) / 1000
The carbon savings value is calculated as follows:
Carbon Savings (kg CO₂-equivalent) = Baseline Carbon Footprint − Reduced Carbon Footprint
The two decarbonisation metrics are calculated over a defined time frame (daily or monthly) and exclusively at a community level, considering that the imported electricity composition is not readily available for each community participant but approximated based on country-level electricity consumption emissions as explained above.
The emissions data for most European countries is calculated based on real-time values retrieved from the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E) Transparency Platform API. The platform provides the actual generation per production type on an hourly basis. The carbon intensity for each country is obtained by multiplying the energy generated by every plant each hour by the appropriate electricity supply technology emission factor (EF) from Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. The sum of these products gives the hour’s total CO₂-equivalent emissions, and dividing by total electricity generated yields the carbon intensity, based on the following formula:
Country Carbon Intensity (kg CO₂-equivalent/kWh) = [(Energy Fossil Gas (kWh) × EF Gas (kgCO₂-equivalent/kWh)) + (Energy Biomass × EF Biomass) + … + (Energy Solar × EF Solar)] / (Energy Fossil Gas + … + Energy Solar)
Additionally, two open-source database sources are used for retrieving country-specific CO₂-equivalent emission data for other regions, namely Electricity Maps (licenced under the Open Database License - ODbL), which provides historical data on carbon intensity of electricity generation based on a country’s energy mix, and Our World in Data (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License - CC-BY), an open-source, nonprofit organisation offering comprehensive global datasets, including carbon intensity of electricity generation. For countries or region****s where direct CO₂-equivalent emissions data was not available (such as Andorra, Palau, etc.), values from neighbouring countries or regions are selected.
The world carbon footprint value is calculated as follows:
World Carbon Footprint (g CO₂-equivalent / kWh) = 540 (14.6 (total emissions) / 27000 (global electricity production)) (IEA)
A list of CO₂-equivalent emission data sources is provided in the table below. Note: In case you have a suggestion on how to improve a select data source, please write to us at contact at gridsingularity.com