Audit Trail

Audit Trail ADD-ON

Audit trails provide detailed information about the emission factors used in calculations for advanced endpoints such as freight shipping, cloud computing, and classification. They can be stored with calculated emissions for future reference and audits.

The audit trail is considered enabled in any of the following scenarios:

The audit_trail feature is enabled for your project.
You provide a Selector to an endpoint that supports it. This is so you can adjust your query based on the emission factor selected.

How Does the Audit Trail Affect Other Features?

Some endpoints such as procurement might have more detailed calculation breakdowns or details that are only visible if audit trail is enabled.

Note: "Energy feature - advanced audit trails" This document describes the audit trail feature for most of our features, but the energy feature is trialling a new advanced audit trail feature which is documented within the energy documentation.

How Does the Audit Trail Affect Estimations?

When the audit trail feature is enabled, the returned data in Estimations is affected as follows:

Feature	Feature Disabled (Default)	Feature Enabled
audit_trail	Indicates if the audit trail feature is enabled through a custom Selector or the project settings.	disabled if disabled, selector if enabled through a provided selector, or enabled if enabled in project settings.
emission_factor	Information about which emission factor was used for the calculation.	null
constituent_gases	The constituent gases that make up the emission factor.	null

By default, audit trails are disabled for all projects. If you are using advanced endpoints and want to access the audit trail feature, please contact us for more information.

Used Emission Factor

This model provides information on the emission factor earthemission used for your query.

Attribute	Description
name	Emission factor name.
id	Unique ID for this emission factor.
activity_id	ID for the activity the emission factor applies to. Multiple factors can share the same activity_id, e.g., if they're from different sources or regions.
access_type	Data access type: private or public. Public factors are available to all, while private factors are only accessible to you.
source	Emission factor publisher.
source_dataset	Dataset published by the source.
year	Most relevant year for the emission factor according to the source.
region	Geographic region the emission factor applies to.
category	Emission factor category.
source_lca_activity	Associated Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) activity.
data_quality_flags	List of data quality flags for this emission factor. An empty list means no detected data quality issues.

"emission_factor": {
    "name": "District heat and steam",
    "activity_id": "heat_and_steam-type_district",
    "id": "8b61d49c-b55d-4b74-bd2d-925fdd35379a",
    "access_type": "public",
    "source": "BEIS",
    "source_dataset": "UK Government GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting",
    "year": 2022,
    "region": "GB",
    "category": "Heat and Steam",
    "source_lca_activity": "use_phase",
    "data_quality_flags": []
}

Constituent Gases

The constituent gases model explains which constituent gases the source of the data considers to be part of their calculations. Not all sources provide this data, so all the fields might be null.

The constituent gases also depend on the calculation methodology chosen. If you filter on different calculation methodologies, you might see different constituent gases. Learn more about calculation methods and constituent gases here

Attribute	Description
co2e_total	The total amount of GHG emitted per unit of activity expressed as kgCO2e, as reported by the source. It is null for earthemission-performed calculations.
co2e_other	The total amount of GHG emitted that are not CO2, CH4, or N20 - expressed in kgCO2e emitted per unit of activity, as reported by the source.
co2	The amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted per unit of activity expressed as kgCO2, as reported by the source.
ch4	The amount of methane (CH4) emitted per unit of activity expressed as kgCH4, as reported by the source.
n2o	The amount of nitrous oxide (N2O) emitted per unit of activity expressed as kgN2O, as reported by the source.

"constituent_gases": {
    "co2e_total": null,
    "co2e_other": null,
    "co2": 22.63,
    "ch4": 0.0004265,
    "n2o": 0.00004265
}