Facilities & corporate vehicles: data collection (Scope 1, 2, 3)

Before you measure anything, you need primary data — the real, organisation-specific records of what you burned, refilled, drove, consumed and disposed of. This guide is your pre-flight checklist for facilities and corporate vehicles, covering Scope 1 (combustion, recharges, mobile fuel, process), Scope 2 (electricity, district heating & cooling) and Scope 3 (water and waste).

Primary vs. secondary data, in one line

Primary data is measured at your own operations (an invoice, a meter reading, a refill ticket). Secondary data is an average or proxy (an industry estimate). Dcycle prioritises primary data — it’s more accurate, more defensible, and required by most reporting frameworks (CSRD, ISO 14064, GHG Protocol).

Before you start: define the perimeter

Decide these once, up front. Everything else depends on them:

• Reporting period — a 12-month window. Most companies use the calendar year (e.g. 2025-01-01 → 2025-12-31); Dcycle also supports a fiscal year if your accounting cycle runs differently (e.g. 2025-04-01 → 2026-03-31).
• Base year — the year you’ll compare against in future reports. Most organisations choose the first complete year they have reliable data.
• Organisational boundary — which legal entities and facilities are in scope. Operational control is the default for most companies. This is usually defined at corporate level — check with your finance or sustainability lead if you’re not sure.
• Reporting standard — GHG Protocol, ISO 14064, or both. Dcycle aligns with both by default.

Scope 1 — Direct emissions

Emissions from sources you own or control: heating fuel, refrigerant leaks, fleet fuel, industrial processes.

Facilities

Every Scope 1 and Scope 2 record attaches to a Facility, so set those up first — full walkthrough in Setting up your facilities in Dcycle.

For each site, have ready: Organization (parent company), Facility name, Type (rented or owned), Country, and Active categories (electricity, combustion, recharges, water…).

Combustion — Stationary combustion (heating, on-site fuels)

This is fuel burned in equipment you own at a fixed location: boilers, furnaces, on-site generators, gas heating.

Expected formats: PDF invoices, Excel spreadsheets, or manual entry (manually putting values one by one).

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Facility	Required	Which site the fuel was consumed at
Fuel type	Required	Natural gas, diesel, LPG, fuel oil, propane, biomass, etc.
Quantity consumed	Required	The number on the invoice
Unit	Required	kWh, m³, litres or kg — match what the supplier billed you
Start date / End date	Required	Billing period (YYYY-MM-DD)
Invoice reference	Recommended	Supplier invoice number, for traceability
Supplier	Optional	Lets Dcycle use supplier-specific emission factors if available

Recharges — Fugitive emissions (refrigerants & fire extinguishers)

Gases that leak from cooling equipment, HVAC systems, refrigerators, and fire suppression systems. You report them based on what your maintenance company refilled during the year. Under the GHG Protocol mass-balance method, the refill is treated as the leak — you top up to replace what escaped. New installations (initial charge) and decommissioned equipment (recovered gas) are accounted for separately on the technician’s report.

Expected format: PDF service report from your maintenance company, or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Facility	Required	Site where the equipment is installed
Refrigerant type	Required	R-410A, R-134a, R-32, R-404A, CO₂, etc. — taken from the technician’s service report
Quantity refilled	Required	Usually in kg
Unit	Required	kg
Start date / End date	Required	For a single refill, use the same date for both. For a periodic maintenance report covering a window (e.g. a yearly service contract), use the start and end of that window
Service invoice reference	Recommended	Invoice or ticket number from the maintenance company

Vehicles — Mobile combustion (owned & rented fleet)

Fuel burned in vehicles your organisation owns or leases (long-term rental counts). This works in two steps: first register the vehicle, then add its consumption.

Step 1 — Register each vehicle

Expected formats: CSV, Excel, or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
License plate	Required	Registration number — must be unique
Type	Required	Passenger or freight
Ownership	Required	Owned or rented
Country	Required	Where the vehicle is registered (e.g. ES, FR, DE)
Fuel type	Required	Diesel, petrol, electric, hybrid, LPG, CNG
Name	Optional	Internal label (e.g. “Van 03”)
Registration year	Optional	YYYY — improves emission factor accuracy
Segment / size	Optional	Small, medium, large

Step 2 — Add fuel consumption for each vehicle

Expected formats: CSV or Excel export from your fuel card provider, or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
License plate	Required	Links the consumption to the vehicle you registered
Start date / End date	Required	The period the fuel was consumed
Quantity	Required	Litres of fuel or kilometres driven
Unit	Required	Litres or km

Data collection tips for vehicles

Fleet data is rarely clean on the first year. Practical workarounds:

• No real consumption? Use the contract. If your leasing or rental contract sets a yearly limit (km/year or litres/year) and you don’t have actual consumption yet, enter the contracted figure for this year and replace it with measured data next reporting cycle. Start with what you have — improve it iteratively.
• Fuel cards from a single provider. If your employees fuel up through a corporate card (Solred, Cepsa, Repsol, Galp, BP, Shell), reach out to the card provider — most of them issue a yearly summary in Excel with litres per licence plate on request. This is usually faster than collecting individual receipts.
• Plates missing, changing, or shared. If licence plates rotate, change mid-year, or simply aren’t tracked, aggregate the consumption into a single “virtual vehicle” per fuel or configuration — e.g. “Total Diesel fleet”, “Total Hybrid fleet”, “Total LPG fleet”. Put a placeholder ID in the plate column (DIESEL-TOTAL, HYBRID-TOTAL) so Dcycle still accepts the record.
• Company-leased benefit cars are Scope 1. If a vehicle is offered to an employee as a benefit but the leasing contract is held by the company, it stays in Scope 1 — the company controls the asset. Employee-owned cars used for work go in Scope 3 (employee commuting or business travel) instead.
• Industrial vehicles without plates. Forklifts, tractors, telehandlers, on-site machinery and other industrial equipment often don’t have a road licence plate. Use an internal placeholder ID (FORKLIFT-01, TRACTOR-02) — Dcycle only needs the plate field filled, not a real registration.

Process — Industrial process emissions

Greenhouse gases released directly by a chemical or physical transformation inside your facility — not from burning fuel. Think of the CO₂ that escapes when limestone becomes clinker in a cement kiln, or the perfluorocarbons released during aluminium smelting. These are reported separately because the emission doesn’t come from energy, it comes from the reaction itself.

Process emissions usually apply to a narrow set of industries (cement, lime, steel, aluminium, glass, ceramics, chemicals, fertilisers, pulp & paper). If your activity is not on that list, you can skip this section.

Because every process is different, the data you need, the units involved and the calculation approach vary by industry. We’ve split this into its own guide:

→ Process emissions: what to collect by industry — explains the GHG Protocol approach, what data to gather, how the calculation works, and examples for the most common industries.

Scope 2 — Indirect emissions from purchased energy

Emissions from energy you buy and consume on-site: electricity, district heating, district cooling, steam.

Electricity

The most common Scope 2 source. Dcycle calculates both location-based (national grid average) and market-based (your supplier’s specific mix) values when you provide the supplier.

Expected formats: PDF invoices, Excel spreadsheets, Datadis (automatic, Spain only), or manual entry.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Facility	Required	Site where electricity was consumed
Consumption	Required	Total active energy from the invoice
Unit	Required	kWh
Start date / End date	Required	Billing period
Supplier	Required for market-based	Your electricity retailer (Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy, EDP, etc.)
Invoice reference	Recommended	Supplier invoice number
Amount + Currency	Optional	Invoice total excluding taxes & tariffs (e.g. 395.62 EUR). Doesn’t change the carbon calculation, but lets Dcycle show energy spend alongside emissions and supports spend-based cross-checks
Custom emission factor	Optional	Only if you have a Power Purchase Agreement, Guarantees of Origin, or supplier-disclosed factor outside Spain

District heating & cooling

Heat or cold delivered through a network (common in northern Europe, industrial parks, some city centres). Even though the energy comes from burning fuel, the combustion happens at your supplier’s plant — so it counts as Scope 2 (purchased energy), the same way as electricity.

Expected formats: PDF invoices or Excel spreadsheets.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Facility	Required	Connected site
Service type	Required	District heating or district cooling
Consumption	Required	Energy delivered
Unit	Required	kWh (MWh and GJ also accepted)
Start date / End date	Required	Billing period
Supplier	Recommended	The district network operator
Invoice reference	Recommended	Supplier invoice number

Scope 3 — Value-chain emissions tied to facilities

Two Scope 3 categories sit naturally with facility data because the invoices come from the same place as the rest: water (purchased) and waste (sent off-site for treatment).

For the rest of the Scope 3 picture — purchases, business travel, employee commuting, capital goods, upstream/downstream transport, sold products, franchises and investments — see the dedicated Scope 3 data collection checklist.

Water

Water drawn from the municipal supply for use at your facilities. Counts under Scope 3, Category 1: Purchased goods & services.

Expected formats: PDF invoices or Excel spreadsheets.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Facility	Required	Site where the water is consumed
Consumption	Required	Volume from the invoice
Unit	Required	m³
Start date / End date	Required	Billing period
Supplier	Recommended	Your water utility (Canal de Isabel II, Aigües de Barcelona, etc.)
Invoice reference	Recommended	Supplier invoice number

Waste

Solid and liquid waste generated at your facilities and sent off-site for treatment (recycling, energy recovery, incineration, landfill, composting). Counts under Scope 3, Category 5: Waste generated in operations.

Expected formats: PDF invoices or manifests from your waste manager, or Excel spreadsheets.

Any format must contain:

Field	Required	Notes
Facility	Required	Site where the waste was generated
Waste type	Required	Mixed municipal, paper/cardboard, plastic, glass, organic, hazardous, etc.
Quantity	Required	Mass collected during the period
Unit	Required	kg or tonnes
Start date / End date	Required	Collection / billing period
Supplier	Required	The waste management company that collected it
RD Code	Recommended (see below)	EU treatment / disposal code
Distance to destination	Optional	Km from the facility to the treatment site — drives transport emissions; leave blank if unknown

Units quick reference

Click to expand the units table

Source	Standard unit	Acceptable alternatives
Natural gas (combustion)	kWh	m³
Diesel / petrol / LPG (combustion)	litres	kg
Biomass (combustion)	kg	tonnes
Refrigerants (recharge)	kg	—
Electricity	kWh	MWh (convert: 1 MWh = 1,000 kWh)
District heating / cooling	kWh	MWh, GJ (1 GJ ≈ 277.8 kWh)
Fleet fuel	litres	km
Water	m³	litres (1 m³ = 1,000 L)
Waste	kg	tonnes

Where to source your data

All sources listed below are valid primary data — the first column is usually the fastest, the second is an equally valid fallback.

Data	Easiest source	Alternative source
Gas, diesel, LPG invoices	Utility / supplier portal	Accounting / AP records
Refrigerant recharges	HVAC maintenance reports	Service company invoices
Vehicle fuel	Fuel card provider exports	Mileage logbooks, expense reports
Electricity (Spain)	Datadis (automatic)	Utility invoices
Electricity (other countries)	Utility portal	Accounting records
District heating / cooling	District operator invoices	Building manager records
Water	Water utility invoices	Pump meter readings (for wells / boreholes)
Waste	Waste manager invoices / manifests	Internal weighing logs

Best-practice checklist before you import

• Periods don’t overlap and don’t have gaps within the reporting year
• Dates in YYYY-MM-DD format
• Using CSV? Make sure accents and special characters (ñ, ü, é) render correctly when saving — Excel files don’t need this step, so they’re often the simpler choice
• Facilities and vehicles are created in Dcycle before you upload their consumption data
• Each refrigerant recharge has a service date and the gas type from the technician’s report
• You keep the source documents (PDF invoices, service tickets) — auditors will ask

If you’re missing a piece of data, start anyway with what you have. Dcycle will flag the gaps so you can close them iteratively — partial data today beats perfect data next quarter.