Towards interoperable carbon intensity metrics

One in a set of two papers on interoperable carbon intensity metrics, this report analyses freely available and commercial datasets on the carbon intensities of aluminium, cement and steel across a wide range of installations and countries. It evaluates them in terms of granularity, timeliness, accuracy and comparability. The findings show that differences between these datasets lead to discrepancies in reported carbon intensities, which are larger at the installation level than at aggregate level (i.e. country or country groups). Overall trends in carbon intensity across datasets are consistent, suggesting that they are still useful to monitor progress and gauge disparities across countries and installations’ carbon intensities. They, however, fall short of the precision needed for policy design and implementation that mandate payments or other obligations based on product- or installation-level carbon intensity. Strengthening data collection and interoperability, particularly through policy-mandated reporting, is essential to enhance the accuracy and comparability of carbon intensity metrics and support effective industrial decarbonisation.