Methodology

1. Greenhouse gas emissions — Scope 1

Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by your organization. EcoDiligence calculates Scope 1 from the fuel-consumption inputs you enter during the wizard, using the following emission factors:

Heating fuels — the fuel you select for heating, in its own unit:

• Natural gas: 2.0 kg CO₂e per cubic meter (m³).
• Heating oil / kerosene (burning oil): 2.54 kg CO₂e per liter.
• Diesel / gas oil, incl. generators: 2.755 kg CO₂e per liter.
• LPG (heating): 2.94 kg CO₂e per kilogram.
• District heat: 0.17 kg CO₂e per kWh.
• Wood pellets: 0.0543 kg CO₂e per kilogram — methane and nitrous oxide only (DEFRA 2024, bioenergy). The CO₂ from burning wood is biogenic and is reported outside the scopes, so it is not in this figure.

Vehicle fuels — road fuels are priced on DEFRA's “average biofuel blend” basis, which reflects the bioethanol and biodiesel share in the fuel actually sold at the pump:

• Petrol: 2.09 kg CO₂e per liter.
• Diesel: 2.51 kg CO₂e per liter. Diesel is denser than petrol and carries more carbon per liter — the two are not interchangeable.
• LPG (vehicles): 1.55 kg CO₂e per liter.
• Biodiesel (100% / B100): 0.168 kg CO₂e per liter — methane and nitrous oxide only (DEFRA 2024, bioenergy); the biogenic CO₂ is reported outside the scopes. A blend such as B7 is mostly fossil diesel and is entered as diesel.
• Electric vehicles: no Scope 1 contribution. The kWh drawn is added to your Scope 2 electricity total, where your country grid factor applies.

Source: UK Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) Greenhouse Gas Conversion Factors, 2023 edition; wood pellets and biodiesel from the 2024 edition (v1.1, Bioenergy).

2. Greenhouse gas emissions — Scope 2

Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling. EcoDiligence uses country-specific grid emission factors based on the location of operation you select during the wizard. We call this the “Country Pack” system — see Section 4 below for the full list of supported countries and the source of each factor.

Factors are sourced from a combination of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Emissions Factors 2024 dataset, Ember Global Electricity Review 2024, the European Environment Agency, the UK DEFRA GHG Conversion Factors 2024, US EPA eGRID, and national regulatory sources where available. Each profile records the exact factor and source used at submission time, so the calculation remains auditable even after the underlying constants change.

If you operate in a country not present in our factor table, we fall back to either the European Union average (0.183 kgCO₂e/kWh, EEA 2024) or the global fallback (0.473 kgCO₂/kWh, Ember 2024). The EU average is a CO₂e generation-intensity factor; the global average is CO₂ only and excludes non-CO₂ gases. Neither includes T&D losses. The profile clearly indicates when a default factor was used.

3. Energy mix and renewable percentage

The renewable percentage on your profile reflects what you enter in the wizard's energy step. We ask for either your direct renewable consumption (kWh from on-site solar, wind, etc., or Renewable Energy Certificates) or a percentage estimate. The percentage is then displayed verbatim on your profile.

We do not apply assumptions or imputation: if you do not know your renewable share, the field stays blank and a data-quality flag appears on your profile.

4. Country Pack methodology

EcoDiligence adapts every ESG Passport to the regulatory and operational context of your primary country of operation. We currently support 11 Smart Packs — each one configures the Scope 2 grid factor, the regulatory framework badges attached to your profile, and the country-specific text used in your PDF and methodology references.

For countries without a dedicated Smart Pack, EcoDiligence uses either the EU fallback of 0.183 kgCO₂e/kWh (EEA 2024, CO₂e generation intensity) or the global fallback of 0.473 kgCO₂/kWh (Ember 2024, CO₂ only — non-CO₂ gases excluded). Neither includes T&D losses. The profile clearly indicates when a default factor was used.

Australian state-level factors (NGA Factors 2025)

The Australian grid spans the National Electricity Market (NEM, covering NSW & ACT, VIC, QLD, SA, TAS), the South West Interconnected System (SWIS, covering most of WA), and the Darwin–Katherine Interconnected System (DKIS, covering the Top End of the NT). Factors vary materially across these grids — from 0.20 kgCO₂e/kWh in hydro-dominated Tasmania to 0.78 kgCO₂e/kWh in brown-coal–heavy Victoria, a roughly four-fold spread. Selecting your state in the wizard gives a materially more accurate Scope 2 number than the national average; leaving it blank applies 0.620 kgCO₂e/kWh (the national location-based average from NGA Table 1).

How it works: When you complete Step 1 of the wizard with Australia as your country of operation, an optional State / Territory dropdown appears. Selecting a state stores the code (e.g. VIC) on your Passport and uses the corresponding factor for Scope 2 calculation. The PDF, public profile, and machine-readable exports all reflect the chosen factor and surface the state in the methodology source line (e.g. “NGA Factors 2025 (DCCEEW) — Victoria”).

Notes on coverage: NSW and ACT share a single factor in NGA Table 1 and are presented as a unified option. Western Australia is represented by the SWIS factor, which serves the great majority of the state's population and business activity; the smaller North-West Interconnected System (NWIS) is not surfaced in the dropdown — users in Karratha or the Pilbara can either leave the field blank (national average) or contact us. Hydro-dam methane is included in the TAS, NSW & ACT, and VIC factors. Methane and N₂O use AR5 GWPs for NGER alignment; ASRS will transition to AR6 in due course.

5. Workforce & Governance disclosures

From v6 (May 2026) EcoDiligence collects four core workforce and governance disclosures from the VSME Basic Module:

• VSME B8 — Number of employees by gender (male, female, other / prefer not to say).
• VSME B9 — Recordable work-related accidents and fatalities during the reporting period.
• VSME B10 — Coverage of employees by collective bargaining agreements (with optional “not applicable”).
• VSME B2 — Presence of code of ethics, anti-corruption, and anti-harassment policies.

These disclosures are optional — but populating them strengthens the ESG Passport's usefulness for supply-chain due diligence requests under EU CSDDD, German LkSG, India BRSR, and similar frameworks. Consultants filling Passports on behalf of SME clients see the same fields — the methodology is identical regardless of who completes the wizard.

6. Standards mapping

Every wizard question maps to one or more disclosure requirements in the standards we support. The mapping is built into the export logic, not just labelled in marketing copy.

• EFRAG VSME (v1.3.0, June 2026) — primary target. Our export fills EFRAG's own VSME Digital Template, whose cells are the VSME taxonomy concepts; EFRAG's official converter turns it into XBRL.
• IFRS ISSB S2 (Climate-related Disclosures) — secondary mapping for climate-specific data points.
• California SB 253 / SB 261 — Scope 1 / 2 disclosure thresholds applicable to entities doing business in California.
• Germany LkSG, UK SECR, India BRSR, Japan SSBJ, Korea K-ESG, Singapore SGX, Malaysia Bursa & SEDG, Brazil B3, Israel ISA — country-specific framework context documented in our Regulations Hub. For Malaysia, reported data also maps to Bursa Malaysia’s Simplified ESG Disclosure Guide (SEDG) v2, exportable as a SEDG Excel report (Pro).

Waste, recycling, and materials data collected in the wizard map to VSME B7 — Resource use, circular economy and waste management. This supports circularity disclosure that buyers sometimes request alongside product regulations such as the EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) — it is not a PPWR certification or conformity assessment. More granular B7-style fields (hazardous waste split, recycled input content) are available where applicable through Advanced Disclosures, currently on the Malaysia SEDG track. See the PPWR overview for the full distinction.

Not sure which of these fields to prioritize before opening the wizard? Our supplier ESG data checklist is an example of the minimum set procurement teams typically request first.

How we map frameworks

Structural coverage is what a complete Passport can contain. It is not a per-supplier score and not a compliance assessment. The diagram shows how requests from different buyers land on the same Passport sections, and which framework requirements those sections address.

By topic and framework

How the statuses and labels work

VSME = sub-disclosures in the Digital Template validation sheet. SEDG = indicator codes in the SEDG v2 Data Collection Template. IFRS S2 = paragraph groups chosen by EcoDiligence (published with this method). ISSB S2 is presented by scope (what is provided), not by grade: IFRS S2 targets listed entities, and a grade would highlight requirements outside an SME's reach.

Each requirement in the map has one of four statuses:

• Covered — A wizard field (or derivation from wizard fields) supplies the information the requirement asks for.
• Partial — The wizard supplies part of the required information: a subset of breakdowns, a band instead of a figure, or a yes/no plus a narrative note.
• Not collected — The wizard does not collect it. A yes/no readiness question with no descriptive field counts as Not collected.
• Conditional — Applies only in specific circumstances (sector, consolidation, voluntary 'may'). Excluded from the denominator and shown separately.

A framework group or a matrix cell gets a label from those statuses, counted over the requirements in scope (Conditional ones are left out): Strong when at least 70% are Covered and at least 90% are Covered or Partial; Substantial at 75% Covered or Partial; Core at 50%. Below that a group gets no grade and we describe what is provided; a matrix cell says Some when anything is addressed and Not collected when nothing is.

SEDG (Malaysia) and ASEDG (ASEAN) share their 38 indicator codes and their Basic, Intermediate and Advanced levels. The wizard asks the same Basic questions in both, and a slightly different set of Pro questions, so the counts are computed from the questions shown for each: 29 requirements addressed under SEDG, 28 under ASEDG.

What we deliberately don't ask. A Passport is meant to take 5–10 minutes, so a few requirements are left out on purpose:

• VSME B10 — Average annual training hours per employee (Template needs hours per gender; skipped to protect the 5-10 minute promise)
• VSME C5 — Additional workforce characteristics (e.g. self-employed, temporary workers)

Completing the rest. A Pro Passport exports the EFRAG VSME Digital Template (Excel), pre-filled from its answers; the supplier can add anything else in Excel. EFRAG's official converter at xbrl.efrag.org turns that file into XBRL once an entity identifier (LEI, D-U-N-S or EU ID) is provided, and flags any disclosures not yet filled.

What the Excel contains. The template's own formulas compute its totals, and we leave them as EFRAG wrote them. One consequence: the template reports waste volume totals (m³) as 0 when waste is reported by mass (tonnes), so the XBRL carries “0 m³” facts that are the template's arithmetic, not a figure the supplier gave.

Status is judged on what the wizard collects. Mapping v0.5.1 — B7 kept Partial after review.

7. ISO 14001 Supplier Management Support

EcoDiligence helps organizations meet ISO 14001:2026 Clause 8.1 requirements for controlling and influencing the environmental performance of their value chain and suppliers.

How ISO 14001-certified organizations use EcoDiligence:

1. Value Chain Environmental Data Collection (ISO 14001 §8.1). Procurement teams on the Supplier Network plan use Supplier Mode to systematically collect ESG data from across their value chain — exactly what Clause 8.1 requires for managing "outsourced processes" and establishing control over "products and services from external providers."
2. Standardized Disclosure Format. Every supplier ESG Passport follows the same VSME-based structure, making comparison and audit straightforward. This satisfies the “documented information” requirement of ISO 14001 §7.5.
3. Environmental Aspect & Risk Identification (ISO 14001 §6.1.2). Aggregated supplier data helps organizations identify environmental aspects and life-cycle impacts within their supply chain — fulfilling the core risk-based thinking and life-cycle perspective requirements of ISO 14001:2026.
4. Continuous Improvement (ISO 14001 §10.3). On every plan, an attested Passport’s reporting period cannot be rolled forward in place: a period that does not overlap the one on file is refused as a new reporting period rather than a correction, so it has to be published as a new Passport and the earlier one stays where it is. Retaining a series of dated, self-reported documents — one per period, for you and your auditor to read side by side — therefore means holding more than one Passport, and Free covers a single reporting period; a second is Pro. An overlapping change counts as a correction and updates the existing Passport in place. EcoDiligence does not compute the comparison between periods; there is no year-over-year field in the product. See What We Don't Do.

8. Plausibility review

When you click publish, the wizard compares a few ratios against fixed typical ranges — the same ranges for every sector, worked out from the midpoints of your headcount and revenue bands. A flag does not reject your input; it asks you to confirm you meant that value. The four checks:

• Electricity per employee outside 2,000–50,000 kWh a year.
• An approximate Scope 1 and 2 figure (fuel plus metered electricity, without electric-vehicle charging) outside 5–500 tCO₂e per million USD of revenue.
• Waste outside 0.1–5 tonnes per employee.
• A renewable electricity share above 50% (a note, not a warning).

You can always publish a value the review flagged. If you do, the public Passport shows a “Data quality flags” note listing which checks fired. The review catches unit slips and typos that move a ratio out of range; a wrong figure that stays inside the range passes, and a check is skipped when its inputs are zero or left blank, so it is not a check on accuracy or completeness.

9. Data quality & attestation

EcoDiligence data is self-reported. We are not an audit firm and do not provide assurance. A Passport can carry an attestation block — the name and role of the company representative who explicitly took responsibility for the submission, and the date they did so. The name and role print in the downloadable PDF; this page shows the confirmation date and does not name the attestor, and their email address is never published anywhere. This provides accountability without claiming third-party verification.

Attestation is a separate step, taken after publishing. A Passport that has not been attested says so, in the same words, on the public page and in the PDF: no attestation on record, and no attestor is shown. It is never implied. If a Passport is edited after it was attested, the confirmation date stays as it was — only a person may move it — and both surfaces mark it edited since, so the date is not read as covering the current figures.

Each profile also shows data-quality indicators so viewers can assess confidence:

• Evidence-supported — the field was supplied with supporting evidence (e.g. an electricity bill uploaded to the AI parser). Still self-reported; we do not assure the underlying document.
• Self-reported — entered manually without supporting evidence.
• Estimated / imputed — derived from an estimate you provided (e.g. a percentage rather than an absolute value).
• Not provided — left blank; appears as N/A on the profile.

10. Authoritative sources

The factors, standards, and frameworks above draw on:

• Ember Global Electricity Review 2024 / European Electricity Review 2024 / US Electricity 2025 (ember-energy.org).
• International Energy Agency — Emissions Factors 2024 (iea.org).
• DEFRA Greenhouse Gas Conversion Factors 2024 (gov.uk).
• Israel Ministry of Environmental Protection — Emission Factor Tables v9.0 (Aug 2025) (gov.il).
• Singapore Energy Market Authority (EMA) — Singapore Energy Statistics (ema.gov.sg).
• Energy Commission / Suruhanjaya Tenaga — Peninsular Malaysia main grid factor (st.gov.my).
• EFRAG Voluntary SME Standard v1.3.0, June 2026 (efrag.org).
• IFRS Foundation — ISSB S2 Climate-related Disclosures (ifrs.org).

11. Advanced Disclosures (Pro · optional)

Pro users can opt into an additional disclosure layer inside the wizard (Steps 7 & 8). Two modules are available, each individually optional:

• VSME Comprehensive Add-on — 8 questions drawn from EFRAG VSME Comprehensive Module topics C2 (strategy & environment), C3 (governance), and C4 (climate & energy). Five of the questions accept a brief narrative note alongside the Yes/No answer.
• ISSB Transition Readiness — 7 questions on IFRS S2 strategy and target topics (§14, §15-21, §33-36): GHG reduction targets (with structured baseline year, target year, and reduction percentage fields), timeframes, climate strategy, materiality, implementation timeline, allocated resources, and financial impact.

Output mapping

• PDF: rendered as a dedicated section between Workforce / Governance and Methodology. Each question shows Yes/No, the VSME or IFRS source code, and the optional narrative note (if the user answered Yes and provided one). A footer disclaimer states: “Self-reported data; not independently assured. Curated subset, not a full VSME Comprehensive Module submission nor a formal ISSB Transition Plan.”
• VSME Digital Template (XLSX): two verified boolean cells are written (UndertakingHasSetATargetWhichIsRelatedToAPolicy and the climate-adaptation-actions disclosure). Three narrative notes map to verified text cells in the template (strategy description, climate hazards, main actions). The remaining six wizard booleans have no equivalent named range in the EFRAG template and are omitted from the XLSX. The ISSB transition note is written to the template's transition-plan description cell as the primary source (with the environmental goals description, VSME B2, as a fallback).
• XBRL: produced by EFRAG's official converter (xbrl.efrag.org) from the VSME Digital Template above, so only what the template carries reaches it — the C-series cells listed above, and none of the ISSB transition-readiness answers beyond the transition-plan description. The converter needs the reporting entity's identifier: the LEI, D-U-N-S number or EU ID the supplier gave, written to the template's General Information D4/E4. Without one it refuses the file. Our own XBRL (beta) generator is no longer offered in the product.

Downgrade behaviour

When a Pro user downgrades to Free, all Advanced Disclosures data remains in the database. The public profile page, the PDF and the XLSX export silently omit the advanced sections. The owner sees a dashboard notice confirming the data is preserved. Re-upgrading to Pro restores visibility instantly with no data re-entry required.

Verification status

Named ranges and XBRL concepts for the VSME C-series were cross-checked on 2026-06-11 against the official VSME-Digital-Template v1.2.0 defined_names list via openpyxl. Two matches were confirmed; six were removed. See lib/xbrl-vsme-mapping.ts v5 changelog andlib/vsme/fill-template.ts for the detailed mapping. ISSB XBRL mapping is deferred to a future phase that introduces the ifrs-s2 taxonomy namespace.

12. Updates to methodology

When emission factors, taxonomies, or standards change, we update this page and rebuild affected exports. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page reflects the most recent change. Emission factors reviewed quarterly. Full methodology reviewed annually.

For a plain list of what is not built yet and where a shipped feature is narrower than it sounds, see What We Don't Do.

EcoDiligence ESG Passports are self-reported summaries structured for ESG disclosure workflows, built on the EFRAG VSME Basic Module with optional IFRS S2 climate inputs. Content is not independently assured and does not constitute compliance, certification or an audit.