Illustrating Use Case and Required Master Data

SAP EHS Management, environment management provides flexibility to collect, calculate, and aggregate data in many ways. This enables customers in various industries and regulatory jurisdictions to fulfill their requirements. However, for interoperability it's helpful to have a standardized way to model data.

This lesson describes a recommended methodology to create an inventory of your greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions so that it's consumable by GHG-related functionality. It comprises the creation and use of EHS locations, compliance requirements, compliance scenarios, and new standard data classifiers in your EHS system.

The functionality that supports this method will be added to this lesson by their availability. The data structure outlined below follows best practices from the GHG protocol standard.

You must create the following entities in your SAP EHS Management, environment management system to manage GHG emissions:

1. A hierarchy of locations for your company including locations for countries and plants.
2. Compliance requirements with regulatory lists of global warming potentials (GWPs), emission factors and if-needed equations.
3. Compliance scenarios for your plants with activities for their GHG emissions.
4. Data classifiers for use with GHG activities.
5. Activities to collect source data, calculate, and aggregate GHG emissions.

The following figure illustrates a simple example containing one plant with one activity emitting GHG gases.

Assign emissions to their most specific location to enable detailed analysis. The assignment of location properties should be driven by the logic of the required report output.

Regulatory Requirements

Set up GHG-emissions calculations according to regulatory requirements, such as Title 40 Part 98: Mandatory GHG Reporting for the United States of America.

These regulations contain regulatory lists with tables for:

• Global-warming potentials
• Average high-heating values
• General emission factors
• Equations

No Specific Requirements

If you have no specific regulatory requirements, it is recommended to:

1. Create a compliance requirement of type Policy containing your emission factors for either CO2 equivalents or for the individual GHG gases (CO2, CH4, ...)
2. Use the delivered table for GWP.

Standard Classifiers

Create the standard data classifiers listed in Appendix A: Data Classifiers, exactly with the given ID.

Relevant Classifiers

Only create the data classifiers that are relevant for your use case.

Importance

These classifiers are crucial for proper categorization and reporting of GHG emissions data.

Following are the activities to be created for GHS Emissions:

1. Use Listed Substance: Use listed substance L00000275188 (carbon-dioxide equivalent) as subject.
2. Set Unit of Measure: Set the unit of measure to metric tons (t). Do a conversion if required.
3. Set GHG Scope: Set exactly one data classifier for the GHG scope: "Scope 1", "Scope 2 Location-based", "Scope 2 Market-based", or "Scope 3".
4. Scope 2 Emissions: For scope 2 emissions, provide an activity for both location-based and market-based methods.
5. Set Periodicity: The periodicity should be either "monthly", "quarterly" or "yearly".

Additional information can be specified using predefined data classifiers. Custom classifiers can also be used for more specific information.

Separate Calculations

Instead of creating one calculation for the CO2 equivalent, provide calculations of the CO2 equivalents for each specific gas.

Classifiers for Each Gas

Create a classifier for each GHG gas to distinguish the different classes. For example:

• CO2E_CO2
• CO2E_CH4
• CO2E_N2O

1. Use Specific Listed Substance: Use the listed substance for the specific GHG gas (e.g., "carbon dioxide", "methane", "nitrous oxide") as subject.
2. Set Unit of Measure: Set the unit of measure to metric tons (t). Do a conversion if required.
3. Set GHG Scope: Set exactly one data classifier for the GHG scope: "Scope 1", "Scope 2 Location-based", "Scope 2 Market-based", or "Scope 3".
4. Set Periodicity: The periodicity must be either "monthly", "quarterly", or "yearly".

Positive Value

Use the amount of compensated CO2 equivalent as a positive value.

Subject

Use the subject Listed Substance L00000275188 (Carbon Dioxide Equivalent).

Unit of Measure

Set the unit of measure to metric tons (t).

Offset Classifier

Set exactly one classifier: "Offset Scope 1", "Offset Scope 2", or "Offset Scope 3".

Periodicity

The periodicity must be either "monthly", "quarterly", or "yearly".

Aggregation of Source Data

If there are several sub-locations with the same source data and they use the same GHG calculation, the calculation can be done on plant or site level based on aggregated source data. This setup is recommended if feasible.

Aggregation of Calculated Data

Create one aggregation using a distinct classifier for each activity, for example "Office Heating". This might require significant effort if there are many kinds of activities.

For locations of type Plant or Site:

1. Create a compliance scenario for the GHG activity.
2. In the compliance scenario, create a location aggregation, selecting all data with your custom classifier.
3. In the compliance scenario, create a calculation for the desired target periodicity summing up the data from the classifier.
4. Configure the calculation as described in Creating Activities for GHG Emissions.

Use exactly one data classifier per GHG activity out of this list:

F is an example of how to set up a calculation for reporting individual gases. Each gas is identified by a classifier. There's no predefined set of classifiers as they depend on your individual needs.

Instead of creating one calculation for the CO2 equivalent, you provide calculations of the CO2 equivalents for each specific gas.

To be able to distinguish the different classes, you need to create a classifier for each GHG gas, as shown in the following example: