What are fugitive emissions?
Fugitive emissions are gases or vapours that unintentionally escape from equipment like pipes, valves, or tanks—rather than being released in a controlled way (such as through a smokestack). These leaks often occur in systems such as (but not limited to):
Heat pumps
Refrigeration units
Fire safety equipment
Fuel storage (e.g. methane cisterns)
They can be especially harmful when they involve greenhouse gases like methane or hydrofluorocarbons, which are often invisible and hard to detect. These emissions are classified under Scope 1 of the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol.
What you’ll need for this module
To calculate fugitive emissions, you’ll need:
Type of gas (e.g. HFC-32, R401A, methane) and
Volume of gas released, in kilograms (kg)
Since fugitive emissions aren’t linked to spend data, the process is the same whether your accounting platform is connected or not.
Choosing the right option
There are three scenarios to choose from. Picking the one that best fits your situation helps ensure your footprint is accurate:
1. Your business does not have fugitive emissions
Select “I don’t have these emissions” from the module’s front page. This confirms that your business didn’t carry out any activities that would cause fugitive emissions during the selected quarter.
The module will be marked as complete and a 0kg CO₂e footprint will be applied for this quarter.
2. Your business has fugitive emissions and can provide data
Enter the gas type and volume in kg. This gives you the highest quality footprint calculation.
You can add as many entries as you need to, to cover all the activities in your business that may lead to fugitive emissions.
If your business uses equipment that contains gases contributing to fugitive emissions, but no leaks were detected during this reporting period, you should enter a value of 0 kg.
3. Your business has fugitive emissions but no data is available
If you know your business may have caused fugitive emissions but don’t have records of what these were, select “I cannot provide any details.”
The module will be marked as complete, but your footprint will be created with a gap. You can amend this later if you are able to find a record of this data.
Find out more:
See Section 7.3.1.1 of our Carbon Reduction Actions Guide