All changes will take effect from 2024 and therefore do not require recalculation of previous years. The update is in line with the rules for the use of CO2 factors for the CO2 Performance Ladder. Only “Cold from external ATAS” has been adjusted retroactively for all years, due to a change in the methodology.

The updates 2024

• Electricity
  • Gray power: +18%
  • Market mix electricity: -3%
  • Biomass electricity: +61%
• Fuel and Heat
  • Natural gas: +3%
  • Heat from heating network: -1.3%
  • Heat from external ATAS (market mix) -3%
  • Cold from external ATAS (market mix) -62% (2024 and previous years)
• Transport (in kilometers or kWh)
  • Electric transport (km or kWh) on electricity market mix: -3%
  • Electric transport (km or kWh) on gray power: +18%
  • Hybrid passenger cars: -2%

Effect on CO2 footprint

The above changes are only visible in footprints for 2024. If you create a footprint for 2023 and want to analyze the differences with 2022 and previous years, this update is not relevant. You mainly have to deal with the changes in the factors that were implemented at the beginning of 2023, with validity from 2023.

Here you can read the news item about the most important changes in the CO2 factors of 2023 (in Dutch).
And these are our tips for dealing with changed CO2 factors.

Explanation of the changes in CO2 factors

Electricity
The emission factors for electricity have been updated based on the (continuously) changing composition of the electricity mix and the increase in the share of green energy. For Gray electricity (i.e. without the influence of green energy) there is an increase of 18%. An important factor in this is that due to the high gas prices, companies with CHPs have used them less. For the market mix, the CO2 factor has decreased by 3%. This is due to a significant increase in green energy.

Heat and cold supply
The emission factor for heat supply has fallen by 1% because heat networks have made slightly more use of sustainable sources and the composition of the heat has become lower in CO2.

The CO2 factor of cold and heat from an external ATAS system is determined by the electricity (market mix or green) used by the supplier. With market mix electricity, the CO2 factor of the heat supplied decreases by 3%, with green energy it remains zero.
The calculation has been adjusted for cold from an external ATAS. Until 2023, the same factor applied as for heat. Because cold can often be supplied from a ATAS without using the heat pump, we assume from 2024 that a supply of 10 kWh of cold only requires 1 kWh of electricity. This means a decrease of more than 60% in the CO2 factor. We have applied this retroactively for all years because otherwise there would be an inexplicable jump in CO2 emissions.

Fuels
Based on research into the chain emissions of the (Dutch) natural gas mix in 2023, the emission factor for (Dutch) natural gas has increased by 2.6%.

Transport
The emission factors of fuels (diesel, petrol, etc.) have not been adjusted. Therefore, only the CO2 emission factors of electric vehicles have changed. Depending on the composition of the electricity, the CO2 factor increases by 18% (grey electricity) or decreases by 3% (market mix electricity).