carbon equivalent vs CO2e

asked 2024-02-29 06:57:10 -0500

Greg Estep
344 ●9 ●5

Hello all,

I have some clients who assign a social impact cost ($) based on metric tons of CO2 equivalent. I think that the terms CO2 equivalent and the energy plus output, Carbon equivalent, are the same thing. They both adjust the impact based on global warming potential (GWP) factors. However, chatGPT defined the CO2e GWP factors with CO2 = 1, while energy plus GWP factor for CO2 = 0.2727. https://bigladdersoftware.com/epx/doc... So, if I'm trying to determine the CO2e for a client, do I need to post process the Carbon Equivalent outputs by (1/0.2727)?

thanks, Greg

answered 2024-03-04 07:05:40 -0500

Greg Estep
344 ●9 ●5

Evangelos at DesignBuilder support provided an answer for me. He confirms that EnergyPlus provides Carbon Equivalent, and to convert to CO2e (Carbon Dioxide equivalent), the results must be multiplied by a factor of 3.67.

Should EnergyPlus provide CO2e as an output? comments appreciated.

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Comments

@Greg Estep the EnergyPlus development team uses the list of issues on the Github repository to track what improvements should be made. If you search for "co2 equivalent", you'll find the open and closed issues. You can either leave a comment on an open issue, or make a new issue for this feature or enhancement.

If it really is just a multiplier factor to derive CO2-equivalent from Carbon-equivalent, I would image it would be straightforward to implement in EnergyPlus.