Scope 2 Emissions Data From Utility Bills: Getting It Right

Scope 2 emissions data from utility bills: getting it right across many sites

Most companies calculate Scope 2 emissions from the same utility bills accounts payable pays. If those bills are scattered, estimated or missing, the disclosure inherits every gap.

By Sam Strong, VP of Business Development. Reviewed by Tara Dugger, Chief Operating Officer. Published October 24, 2026.

The data you actually need

Every account at every site, including acquired and leased locations.
Usage by billing period, with actual versus estimated reads marked.
Billing periods mapped to calendar months so the reporting year is complete.
Supplier contracts, renewable purchases and REC retirements for the market-based method.

Common gaps

Missing accounts discovered only at year end.
Estimated reads never reconciled; see estimated reads.
Period misalignment, a December bill covering November usage.
Duplicates when the same bill arrives by paper and portal.

One data set for finance and sustainability

When bills are captured line by line for payment, the same records can feed cost and emissions reporting. A chemical distributor with more than 215 facilities now uses one TaraBase data set for GHG Protocol Scope 1 and 2, CDP, ESRS E1 and SBTi reporting, and reports that it eases ISO 14064-1, RE100 and EcoVadis work. In one billing cycle, $76,206.03 of charges, 1,058,183.64 kWh and 529.09 metric tons of CO2e were each traceable to the bill they came from.

Auditing the bills first matters here too: a misread meter or wrong multiplier misstates emissions as well as cost.

Questions buyers ask

Where does Scope 2 data come from?

Mostly from purchased electricity (and purchased steam, heat or cooling) recorded on utility bills and supplier invoices, converted to emissions with location-based grid factors and, for the market-based method, contractual instruments such as RECs and supplier-specific factors.

What usually goes wrong?

Missing sites, estimated reads never trued up, billing periods that do not align with the reporting year, and duplicate bills. Each one changes the reported total.