Worked example
One year of a hypothetical manufacturer's electricity, on four continents. The calculation is MWh times the factor, and the result has almost nothing to do with where the electricity is used.
The twelve sites below are invented. They are seeded in
dbt/seeds/example_scope2_sites.csv and are the only fabricated data in this
warehouse. The factors they are multiplied by are real, and they are
lifecycle factors: the tonnes below include emissions upstream
of the plant, which a filed Scope 2 line leaves to Scope 3.
Electricity purchased (MWh)
Scope 2, location-based (tCO₂e)
Dirtiest grid vs cleanest, same demand
Lyon and Göteborg together draw 17% of the group's electricity and account for 1.7% of its reported emissions. Lyon alone draws three times the power of the Durban depot, 54 GWh against 18, and reports less than a fifth of its tonnes, because France's grid runs at 41 gCO₂e/kWh and South Africa's at 699. At the other end, Pune is 11% of the electricity and 18% of the footprint.
The same demand on the cleanest and dirtiest grid
The same 582,500 MWh, moved nowhere except on paper: every site placed on the cleanest grid in the set, Sweden at 35.3 g/kWh, then every site on the dirtiest, South Africa at 699 g/kWh.
Both ends are countries this company already operates in, so the ratio between them is not hypothetical. It is the accumulated cost of siting decisions already taken, sitting in a number that has to be published.