Cooling systems contain refrigerants that can cause significant environmental and climate impact when produced and when leaked during use. Our methodology provides a transparent, standards-aligned way to quantify this impact for corporate sustainability reporting and full LCA.
How We Model Refrigerant Impacts
We distinguish two types of impact:
Refrigerant Production (Upstream Impact) – Scope 3
When equipment is purchased pre-filled with refrigerant, its production impact is treated as part of the capital good and accounted for once. This is modeled using the ecoinvent dataset “market for R134a” as a proxy for refrigerant production.Annual Refrigerant Leakage (Operational Impact) – Scope 1
Any refrigerant released during operation is counted as a direct Scope 1 emission. Leakage is modeled using the ecoinvent dataset “treatment of used refrigerant R134a, venting.”
Climate impacts are calculated by multiplying leaked mass by the IPCC GWP100 value of the refrigerant.
Supporting Many Refrigerants
To support a broad range of refrigerants, we use the R134a datasets as a baseline and scale leakage impacts using the refrigerant’s IPCC GWP value. Production impacts for refrigerants without their own dataset are modeled using R134a production as a transparent, conservative proxy.
What’s Included
Scope 1: Climate and environmental impact of refrigerant leakage
Scope 3: Upstream production impact of the refrigerant pre-installed in capital goods (LCA only)
No end-of-life modeling for leaked refrigerant, as it has already been emitted to the environment.
Standards & Data Sources
GHG Protocol (Scopes 1–3)
IPCC GWP100 values
ecoinvent v3 datasets
ISO 14040/44 LCA principles