Published emission factors change. Grid factors move as the generation mix shifts and as measurement improves. Fuel factors are updated as national inventories are refined. This is normal, expected, and it creates a specific trap for anyone reporting year on year.
Suppose a grid factor is revised downward. You apply the new value to your current year. Your comparative sits on the old one. Your disclosure now shows a reduction in Scope 2 that did not happen — nobody consumed less electricity, the conversion rate simply changed.
That is a misstatement, and it is almost always unintentional.
| Restate | Do not restate | |
|---|---|---|
| What you do | Apply the new factor to prior years and recalculate comparatives | Leave prior years on the versions they used, apply the new one forward |
| What you disclose | The restatement and its reason | The discontinuity, so the trend is not read as like-for-like |
| Advantage | The trend stays comparable | Published figures stay published |
| Cost | Changes numbers already in the market | Trend analysis needs a caveat every time |
Decide before it happens
Both options are defensible. What makes either one defensible is having chosen in advance and applied it consistently. Deciding after a revision, in the direction that flatters the current year, is a different thing entirely — and it is visible to anyone who checks.
Neither option is available unless you recorded which factor and which version produced each historic figure, at the moment the calculation ran.
If you did not, you cannot restate — because you do not know what to restate from — and you cannot disclose the discontinuity accurately either. This is the reason factor versioning is worth building into the process from the first calculation rather than from the first revision.
A summary of a regulation is not the regulation. These are the primary documents this page is based on.
Four questions, and you get the year you first file, the framework, and what to collect first.
Plain-language explainers of the FRC and SEC rules, ISSB S1 & S2, and what each asks you to disclose.
What a consultant-led reporting cycle costs against an annual licence, in Naira.
