What are vehicle emissions?
Vehicle emissions refer to greenhouse gases released by fossil fuel and/or biofuel-powered engines, as well as emissions from electricity used by electric vehicles. If your company uses vehicles for work or business travel, it will have these emissions.
A high-quality measurement of your vehicle emissions is vital for improving fleet efficiency and reducing your business’s environmental impact. Vehicle emissions fall under GHG Protocol Scope 1: Mobile emissions and Scope 3.6: Business travel.
What you’ll need to get started
To calculate your vehicle emissions, you’ll need:
Fuel type (e.g. petrol, diesel, electricity)
Vehicle ownership (company-owned, leased, or employee-owned)
Amount of fuel or electricity purchased over the selected quarter (kilowatt-hours, joules, cubic meters, or litres)
Amount spent on fuel or charging (if usage data is not available)
For hybrid vehicles, add fuel types separately. To add another fuel type, select “Add another fuel type.”
Choosing the right option
The options available will depend on whether you have connected your accounting platform and the data you have available.
If you have connected your financial accounting platform
If you have connected your financial accounting platform
There are a number of possible scenarios when completing this module. Follow the steps that best describes your situation:
1. Your business did not have vehicle-related activity during this period
Select “I don’t have these emissions” from the module’s front page. This confirms that your business didn’t use any vehicle fuel during the selected quarter.
The module will be marked as complete and a 0kg CO₂e footprint will be applied for this quarter.
2. If you know how much vehicle fuel or electricity you used or purchased
For categories where you know the amount used, select Fuel type, vehicle ownership and fuel amount purchased. Choose fuel type and vehicle ownership (owned/not owned). Then, add the amount purchased and unit (cubic metres or litres). This ensures the most accurate footprint calculation.
Usage data will override any spend data for the same category within this quarter. Add all your usage data for this category to ensure accurate calculations. You can add this as one item or choose "Add another fuel type" to add multiple items of the same or different categories.
Repeat this process for all categories where you have usage details, even if there's no spend data in the system. If you don’t have usage data for certain categories, we’ll estimate emissions based on spend data.
3. If you don't know how much fuel you used or purchased
If you can't provide any usage data, don’t worry. Sage Earth Carbon Accounting will calculate your vehicle emissions based on the spend data available.
To check your vehicle spends for this period, go to the Transactions screen. Apply a date filter for this financial quarter and a category filter for Vehicles. If you have any vehicle spends, you'll see the option labelled “I confirm my vehicle expenses are accurate and I cannot provide further details."
Choose this option to confirm that you can't provide usage data and want the system to calculate your vehicle emissions based on your spend data. Your footprint for this module will be recorded, and the module will be marked as complete.
If you don’t have any vehicle fuel spends, you'll see the option labelled “I confirm I have no vehicles expenses and I cannot provide further details."
Selecting this option will mark the module as complete, but your footprint will have a gap. You can always amend this later if you find the data.
If you have not connected a financial accounting platform or if the date range for this module is prior to your integration start date
If you have not connected a financial accounting platform or if the date range for this module is prior to your integration start date
There are a number of possible scenarios when completing this module. Follow the steps that best describes your situation:
1. Your business did not have vehicle-related activity during this period
Select “I don’t have these emissions” from the module’s front page. This confirms that your business didn’t use any vehicle fuel during the selected quarter.
The module will be marked as complete and a 0kg CO₂e footprint will be applied for this quarter.
2. If you know how much fuel you used or bought
For any categories in which you know how much you used, select “Fuel type, vehicle ownership, and fuel amount purchased”. Select the fuel type. Select vehicle ownership (Owned/Not owned). Add the amount of fuel purchased and the unit (Cubic metres or litres). This gives you the most accurate footprint calculation.
Make sure you add usage data to account for your business's entire spend and usage within this category for this quarter. You can add this as one item or choose “Add another fuel type" and add multiple items of the same or different categories.
Repeat this process for all categories that you have detail of how much you've bought or used by choosing “Add another fuel type” and providing the data for each activity.
3. If you do not know how much fuel you used, but you do know how much you spent on vehicle energy fuel
For any categories in which you don't know how much you used but you do know how much you spent, select “Fuel type, vehicle ownership and total fuel cost”. Select the fuel type. Select vehicle ownership. Add the amount paid including VAT or any other taxes. Make sure you do not add cost details for any activities for which you've already provided the usage data (the amount used or bought).
If you add detail of what you spent on a category in this section and you've also added detail of how much you used in the above section, Sage Earth Carbon Accounting assumes these datapoints refer to different activities and will count both entries in your footprint. Make sure the data you add between usage and cost accounts for your business's entire spend and usage within this category for this quarter. You can add this as one item, or choose “Add another fuel type" and add multiple items of the same category.
Repeat this process for all relevant activities by “Add another fuel type" and providing the data for each activity.
4. If you know vehicle fuel was used but have no spend or usage records
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.
Points to note
For electricity purchased to charge electric cars, only charging expenses from outside company premises should be submitted.
For hybrid vehicles, add each fuel type (e.g. petrol, electricity) separately.
Multiple vehicle expenses can be consolidated into one entry or added as distinct items.
Find out more:
See Section 6 of our Carbon Reduction Actions Guide