Average vs Total Custom Based Metrics

Overview 

At Carbonhound, you have the ability to set custom intensity targets— which goes beyond the two metrics that the system provides (Emissions by revenue earned and Emissions by number of employees)

There are two types of custom based metrics- Average and Total. Depending on the Intensity Metric Value (the value they are dividing their absolute emissions by), they might choose either average or total intensity methods.

Average Intensity Emissions:

To calculate the annual average intensity emissions, you simply divide the total annual emissions by the average of each of your monthly inputs of the chosen unit.

Total intensity Emissions:

For the annual total intensity emissions, you are dividing the total emissions by the aggregate of all the monthly inputs. 

To illustrate this, let’s look at a case study:

Case Study:

Lucid Pharma is a pharmaceutical company that produces insulin shots. They want to find out how much carbon emissions are emitted per millimetres of insulin liquid produced.

In 2020, they emitted a total of 500 tons of CO2e. The monthly production of insulin shots, in milimeters, are as follows:

Average Intensity Method:

We are going to first find the average of all the monthly inputs:

40+60+50+50+60+20+30+10+80+80+100)/12$= 46.7 mm

We then subsequently divide the total emissions by the average monthly inputs:

500/46.7=10.7 Tons of CO2e/mm

Total Intensity Method: 

You are going to find the aggregate or the total sum of the each of the monthly insulin production levels:

40+60+50+50+60+20+30+10+80+80+100= 560

Divide the total emissions by the total sum:

500/560= 0.89 tons of CO2e/ mm

The two values are differed significantly, so it begs the question: which one should we choose in this scenario?

The answer is the Total Intensity Method as it calculates the emissions per millimetre where as the average intensity method calculates the emissions per months-worth of insulin production (in mm).