PCAF European Building Emission Factor Database

Definition

PCAF European Building Emission Factor Database is a database of emission factors that is publicly available to all financial institutions and further interested stakeholders. It provides a specified set of emission factors for commercial real estate and mortgages for all countries in the European Union, as well as Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Depending on the data availability, financial institutions can distinguish between European countries, residential and non-residential building types, and Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) ratings to extract the specified emission or energy intensity per floor area or unit.

Objective

The PCAF European building emission factor database, created by Guidehouse Netherlands B.V. on behalf of PCAF, provides financial institutions (FIs) with a specified set of emission factors for mortgages and commercial real estate for all countries in the European Union, as well as Norway, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. The key objective of the database is to enable the financial industry to measure and track the financed emissions of their European building portfolios towards net zero.

The project aims to provide clear guidance to financial institutions on how to accelerate the European building stock transition and leverage both public and private finance in the right direction.

Usage

Together with PCAF Methodology for Mortgages for the calculation and attribution of emissions and the overall Portfolio Carbon Footprint

Database Structure

The database structure is in the form of a single database table (~9K entries, one per emissions factor). For each emissions factor the following key data are provided:

Emission Factor ID
Asset Class (Residential / Commercial Real Estate)
Emission Factor Type (Emissions or Energy)
Country
Data Level 1 Information
Data Level 2 Information
EPC Rating
Emission Factor Functional Unit (name)
Emission Factor Functional Unit (unit)
Emission Factor (name)
Emission Factor (unit)
PCAF Data Quality score (Range in 1 - 5)
Emission Factor (value)
Emission Factor methodology description
Emission Factor Source (Slots for up to 4 historical values)
Emission Factor Year (Slots for up to 4 historical values)
Link to emission factor documentation
Status (Published)
Inserted By (User Data)

References