Assigning factors with effective or published dates

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You can specify whether to use effective dates, published dates, or both when you assign factors.

In IBM® ESG Suite, factors are used to calculate sustainability metrics, such emissions and energy, and in conversions, such as mass and volume. A factor is selected based on a hierarchy of criteria, which include factor set, data type, sub type, effective dates, and published dates.

Many environmental agencies, such as US EPA, IEA, and DEFRA, publish factors years after the factors are effective. The time lag is typically two years. For example, an agency might publish factors in 2024 that are based on activity data from 2022.

In Envizi ESG Suite, two sets of dates are stored for each emission factor; effective dates and published dates.

The following methods can be used in Envizi ESG Suite to assign factors.
Use effective and published dates
Use effective dates for historical factors and switch to published dates on a specific date, which is known as the historical load date.
When an organization on-boards with Envizi ESG Suite, it loads historical data into the platform. For historical data, organizations typically apply factors based on effective dates. An organization can then decide the point in time at which their data switches from using the effective dates of an emission factor to the published dates.
Use published dates only
Use the latest available factors in factor calculations. Reporting relies on the published dates of the factor set. This method is the recommended method.

IBM Envizi recommends using published dates only. Although using effective dates only provides the greatest alignment of emissions calculations to the underlying data used to calculate emission factors, it leaves client emission data open to recalculation.

Use effective dates only
Use the factors that were available at the time the activity occurred. Reporting relies on the effective dates of the factor set. If you use effective dates solely, your calculations that rely on factors, for example, emissions, are recalculated to use factors based on effective dates when new factors are published.

Using effective dates is only recommended if your organization performs external emission reporting and your organization is moving from a system where effective dates were used. This scenario is not common and most organizations are already on a system where published dates are used.

Important: Your system administrator configures which date options IBM Envizi will use to calculate emissions by modifying the internal Historical data load setting.
The following behavior exists when a value is set by your system administrator:
  • If the value is blank, effective dates are used.
  • If the value is set, emissions before the date will calculate using the effective dates, and after will use published dates.

    To use published dates only, the date should be set to a time before any client data exists.

Once the Historical data load value has been set, it should not be changed. Changing this setting will recalculate emissions.

Example

The following is an example of using effective and published dates. In March 2019, a company called ACME on-boards with Envizi ESG Suite. ACME wants to use effective dates for historical data and published dates for activity data outside of the historical period. History data spans from January 2014 to March 2019. March 2019 represents the end of the historical period, referred to as the Historical data load value.

Table 1 displays the factors that are currently available, as of July 2019.
Table 1. Factors published by July 2019
  Factor Effective from Effective to Published from Published to
A 0.6   December 2014   June 2017
B 0.7 January 2015 December 2015 July 2017 June 2018
C 0.8 January 2016 December 2016 July 2018 June 2019
D 0.9 January 2017 December 2017 July 2019 June 2020

In March 2019, when ACME on-boards with Envizi ESG Suite, factors A, B, C, and D are published. However, only factors A, B, and C have effective dates that are aligned with the historic period, which is up to March 2019. Factor D was published in July 2019, which is later than March 2019 and was not available, so this factor cannot be applied.

Period 1 in this example is from January 2014 to February 2016 and uses effective dates. As of March 2019, factor D was not yet published so it could not have been used to calculate emissions for 2017, 2018 or January to March 2019.

The next period to consider is period 2 from January 2017 to June 2019. During this period, the last current factor is maintained until the next factor is published immediately after the historical data load date, which is March 2019. In this case, factor C is used from January 2017 to March 2019. Factor C is continually applied to data for April to June 2019 until the next factor in the series is published, which is factor D in July 2019.
Period 2
  • 2017 = 0.8 (C)
  • 2018 = 0.8 (C)
  • January to June 2019 = 0.8 (C)
As shown in the example, for a short time, the factor value does not change until the switchover. The next factor is published in the sequence, which happens in July 2019. Only after July 2019 is the factor published and available use for the organization.
The final period is the period after the historical data load date. It uses published dates only.
Period 3:
  • 2019 uses 0.9 (D)
From July 2019 onwards, ACME assigns factors to activity data based on published dates.