About this document. This guidance was prepared in 2026 as a good-faith effort to document how the Higg platform calculated the FEM 2020 energy, greenhouse gas, water, waste and refrigerant values. FEM 2020 predates the calculation model maintained by Cascale today: the platform applied its own conversion factors and emission factors and wrote the results back into the assessment as answers, where data consumers see them next to the facility’s own answers. What follows is reconstructed from the FEM 2020 question and answer definitions, from those stored results across 16,504 assessments, and from the release history. It may not accurately describe all platform behaviour, in particular edge cases that leave no trace in the data. Statements derived from the data rather than from a specification are marked observed, with the number of filings behind them.

Scope

This document describes the energy, greenhouse gas and refrigerant values the Higg platform calculated for a FEM 2020 assessment and reported back to the facility, its verifier and data consumers. They are the FEM’s own simplified footprint, not a GHG Protocol inventory, and they are neither purely location-based nor purely market-based:

• One totalGHGemissions figure combines fuel combustion, refrigerants, purchased electricity, steam and chilled water; the only split published is renewable versus non-renewable. There is no scope split and no location/market pair.
• Purchased electricity carries a single country grid factor (location-based); purchased renewables carry a factor of 0 (market-style treatment of contracted renewable electricity). Energy Attribute Certificates were not collected.
• Biogenic CO2 from biomass and biodiesel is inside the totals, at full combustion factors.
• Purchased steam and chilled water are counted at a fixed fuel-oil-type factor with no supplier data; refrigerant purchased or added is treated as emitted; wastewater emissions are not calculated at all in FEM 2020.
• Factors are single CO2e values per source on an IPCC AR4/AR5 basis (FEM 2023 moved to AR6); there is no gas-by-gas breakdown and no process emissions.

The Higg Assessment Model recomputes FEM 2020 answers on a GHG Protocol aligned basis with current factors; those results differ from the platform values described here by design and are documented in the HAM guidance.

Energy Data

Facilities first flagged each energy source they use (yes/no, one answer per source), then reported a quantity and a unit for each source they track. Energy is reported for the site as a whole: there is no split by facility type, domestic use or vehicle use in FEM 2020.

The platform’s MJ result for each source is stored as an answer under the ref_id in the last column.

Conversion to MJ

The platform held one energy density per source and multiplied the reported quantity by it after converting the quantity to the density’s base unit: energy units are converted with the standard factors below and the density is not applied; mass units are converted to kilograms and volume units to litres. The density for each source is listed in the source table above; solid fuels and steam are per kilogram, liquid fuels and natural gas per litre.

Behaviour that follows from having a single density per source (observed):

• A mass unit reported for a liquid fuel, or a volume unit for a solid fuel, is converted through the same number as if one litre were one kilogram (for example LPG in kg → 25.63 MJ, the litre density; purchased steam in m³ → 2,800 MJ, that is 1,000 kg of water).
• LNG in m³ is converted at 23,600 MJ, the density of the liquid; a gaseous cubic metre would be about 38 MJ.
• Purchased steam by mass: 1 MJ per kg, so a tonne of steam counted as 1,000 MJ. Purchased electricity, chilled water, purchased renewables and the onsite renewables can only be reported in energy units.
• Natural gas has a litre-based density (0.0382 MJ per litre, so 38.23 MJ per m³), while its units also allow the US volume units (cu ft 1.08 MJ, CCF 108.25 MJ).

Energy units (all sources):

Mass units convert to kilograms and volume units to litres with the standard factors (g 0.001, lb 0.4535, oz 0.0283, ton (metric) 1,000, ton (short) 907.185; m³ 1,000, gal 3.7854, cu ft 28.3168, cu yard 764.554, CCF 2,831.68).

Energy densities implied by the stored totals (median of total ÷ quantity per unit, converted to the base unit; observed, with the number of filings that reported the source):

Conversion to kg CO2e

Each source’s emissions are its MJ total multiplied by a single factor held by the platform: ensource[source]totalghg = ensource[source]total × factor.

Factors applied (kg CO2e per MJ) — the values the platform held for FEM 2020, confirmed against the stored results:

Purchased electricity is multiplied by a country grid factor (ensourceelectricpurchtotalgwp, kg CO2e per MJ, selected by the facility’s sitecountry answer), licensed from IEA and updated by the platform between cadences. The factors the platform applied are not preserved outside the assessments themselves. Comparing the factor stored with each filing against the FEM 2020 country factors now held in Cascale’s shared reference data (which were re-derived for the Higg Assessment Model), the platform’s factor is on median 11% higher, and only 3% of filings are within 5% of the shared value, so the shared data cannot be used to reproduce FEM 2020 platform emissions.

The renewable sources (solarphoto, wind, geotherm, hydro, microhydro, solarthermal, purchrenew) carry a factor of 0. Purchased steam and chilled water carry a fixed fuel-oil-type factor of 0.0629; the facility could not report a supplier factor or a generation mix in FEM 2020.

Refrigerants

Refrigerant use is reported in the Air Emissions section in up to five entries (airsourcerefrig1 … airsourcerefrig5): the refrigerant (airsourcerefrig[n]), the quantity added or used (airsourcerefrig[n]quant) and its unit (airsourcerefrig[n]unit: g, kg, lb, oz, ton (metric), ton (short)). The platform converted the quantity to kilograms (airsourcerefrig[n]total), looked up the refrigerant’s global warming potential (airsourcerefrig[n]totalgwp) and multiplied (airsourcerefrig[n]totalghg); totalRefrigerantEmissions is the sum of the five entries. Observed to equal the sum of its components in 99% of 1,908 filings.

The GWP values below are the ones the platform stored with FEM 2020 filings (IPCC AR4 basis, blends as marketed). Only refrigerants that at least one facility reported can be recovered this way; 272 of the 344 refrigerants offered in FEM 2020 were never reported and their platform values are unknown (the FEM 2023 Energy Source Changes document lists FEM 2022 values for those that changed in FEM 2023, several of which were 0).

Totals

The platform stored these aggregates with each assessment. Their composition is observed: the share of filings in which the stored total equals the sum of the listed components within 0.5%.

ensourcetotal — total MJ across all energy sources. Observed to equal the sum of its components in 97% of 13,439 filings.

totalNonRenewableEnergyEmissions — kg CO2e from the non-renewable sources: purchased electricity, steam, chilled water, coal, natural gas, diesel, fuel oil, LPG, propane and petrol. Observed to equal the sum of its components in 98% of 13,270 filings.

totalRenewableEmissions — kg CO2e from the renewable sources including biomass and biodiesel: biodiesel, both biomass sources, solar photovoltaic, solar thermal, wind, geothermal, hydro, micro-hydro and purchased renewables. Observed to equal the sum of its components in 99% of 1,403 filings.

totalRefrigerantEmissions — kg CO2e from the five refrigerant entries.

totalNonRenewableEmissions — totalNonRenewableEnergyEmissions plus totalRefrigerantEmissions. Observed to equal the sum of its components in 100% of 13,293 filings.

totalGHGemissions — totalNonRenewableEmissions plus totalRenewableEmissions. Observed to equal the sum of its components in 100% of 13,306 filings.

totalNormalizedGHGemissions — totalGHGemissions divided by the annual production volume sipfacilityannualprodvolquant (in the unit the facility chose in sipfacilityannualprodvolunits). Observed to equal the sum of its components in 100% of 13,251 filings.

The remaining few percent of filings whose totals do not add up were, as far as the data shows, assessments whose totals were not recomputed after a late edit; the platform did not publish a rule for them.

Cadence Notes

FEM 2020 introduced a redesigned assessment: labelled answer values instead of numeric codes, a single flat energy source list (the coal, biomass, natural gas and fuel oil sub-types of FEM 2017–2019 were collapsed into coal, biomassgen/biomasswood, naturalgas, lpg, propane and fueloil), new sources (biodiesel, solarthermal, purchrenew), and one shared set of units for every energy source. Purchased steam reported by mass was converted at 1 MJ per kg (observed), which understates steam energy roughly threefold.

Not Calculated in FEM 2020

No wastewater treatment emissions, no vehicle energy, no domestic/production split, no facility-type split, no energy or emissions normalised per facility type, and no market-based figures were calculated. Baseline and target answers (enbaseline…, en…target…) were converted to MJ with the same densities but do not enter any total.