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PGE Group’s activities in terms of the EU Environmental Taxonomy

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Decarbonization of operations

PGE Group’s carbon footprint

The carbon footprint is one of the key measures of a company’s environmental impact. Its calculation and data management demonstrate an organisation’s strong climate awareness.

The carbon footprint is the total sum of greenhouse gas emissions (carbon dioxide (), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), sulphur hexafluoride (SF6)), aused directly or indirectly by a person, organisation, event or product.

Simplified diagram of an organisation’s carbon footprint scopes

Scope 2 Scope 3 Scope 3 Scope 1 Indirect emissions Indirect emissions Indirect emissions Greenhouse gas emissions Direct emissions Input data Reportingentity Output data CO2 CH4 HFCS N2O PFCS SF6

Sector’s cooperation for a unified approach to calculating the carbon footprint

In April 2021, PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna began proactive and conscious efforts to implement a carbon footprint calculation standard in the PGE Group. The PGE Group undertook both internal activities within the framework of the established team for calculating the carbon footprint and external activities, in cooperation with the Polish Association of Combined Heat and Power Plants, which resulted in the development of a joint guide for calculating the carbon footprint for the power industry, with substantive support from Bureau Veritas. The guide was developed in accordance with the ISO 14064 standard and the GHG Protocol. It is intended to be used to calculate the carbon footprint at different levels of the organisation. The co-authors of the guide, apart from PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna S.A., include representatives of PGE Group companies operating within the Conventional Power Generation and Heat Generation segments: PGE Górnictwo i Energetyka Konwencjonalna, PGE Energia Ciepła and Zespół Elektrociepłowni Wrocławskich KOGENERACJA. The PGE Group’s carbon footprint counting team was also involved in the development of the guide.

The developed “Guide to the Uniform Carbon Footprint for Power and Heat Generation Entities”, together with an integral IT tool, serve to uniformly capture the carbon footprint for power and heat generation sector entities in the following scopes:

  • Scope 1 – these are direct emissions into the atmosphere from installations (equipment, vehicles, machinery, boilers, plants) that are owned or controlled by an organisation;
  • Scope 2 – these are indirect emissions related to the energy used by an organisation to operate its facilities, whether owned or leased (electricity, heat, cold, transport and distribution losses);
  • Scope 3 – these are other indirect emissions that occur throughout the business value chain, i.e. purchases of goods and services, business travels, commuting to and from work, capital goods, etc.);
  • biogenic emissions – these are emissions associated with the natural carbon cycle, resulting from the combustion, fermentation, decomposition or processing of materials of biological origin.

Scope 1 – direct emissions
Reporting entity

  • Combustion of fuel

  • Car fleet

Scope 2 – indirect emissions
Input data

  • Purchase and use of electricity, heat and cooling for own use

Scope 3 – indirect emissions
Input data

  • Leased assets

  • Employee commuting

  • Biznes travel (car, train, airplane)

  • Waste generated during operations

  • Emissions related to energy and fuels not included in scope 1 and 2

  • Capital goods

  • Purchase of goods and services

Scope 3 – indirect emissions
Output data

  • Transport and distribution

  • Processing of solid products

  • Use of solid products

  • Handling sold products after end of use

  • Leased assets

  • Investments

Based on the work performed so far within the Association in cooperation with key PGE Group companies, a general procedure for calculating the carbon footprint in the PGE Group was adopted in 2022. The purpose of the procedure is to support business management by introducing a standard and providing uniform rules of conduct for the calculation of the carbon footprint in PGE Group companies for the reporting of climate and sustainability issues.

This procedure specifies in particular:

The ways of setting organisational boundaries for counting the carbon footprint and consolidating GHG emissions data

The identification and setting of operational boundaries for individual scopes (scope 1, scope 2, scope 3) as well as biogenic emissions within the carbon footprint calculation

The establishment of materiality limits for the calculation of the carbon footprint

Central to this process was the preparation of companies and their training, in particular in the identification of emission sources, their classification and appropriate conversion to equivalent, using an available and specific emission factor appropriate for the reporting year and a dedicated IT tool. In subsequent years, it will be important to calculate the carbon footprint for a given reporting year based on updated emission factors appropriate for that calendar year. It is planned that, as more data become available, in particular in terms of available emission factors for individual emission sources, and as the maturity of the organisation continues to develop, this process will be streamlined in future years. At the same time, it will enable specific emission reduction targets to be developed.

PGE Group’s carbon footprint

The PGE Group calculated its carbon footprint for the first time as part of the 2020 pilot project.

However, taking a responsible approach to calculating the data and obtaining comparable results within the sector, it takes as its base the data for 2021, when the carbon footprint was calculated on the basis of the manual developed in cooperation with the Polish Association of Combined Heat and Power Plants and the PGE Group’s general procedure for calculating the carbon footprint. The adopted method constitutes a consistent approach to calculating the footprint of a country’s power generation sector.

Greenhouse gas emissions for 2023 were calculated for the key PGE Group companies whose activities are significant and have a significant impact on their carbon footprint, particularly in terms of scope 1 direct emissions and taking into account fees for the use of the environment and water services.

The carbon footprint was calculated in full and included the following PGE Group companies, which are decisive in terms of carbon footprint generation:

  • PGE Górnictwo i Energetyka Konwencjonalna,
  • PGE Energia Ciepła,
  • Zespół Elektrociepłowni Wrocławskich KOGENERACJA,
  • PGE Toruń,
  • Elektrociepłownia Zielona Góra,
  • PGE Energia Odnawialna,
  • PGE Dystrybucja,
  • PGE Ekoserwis,
  • PGE Obrót,
  • PGE Energetyka Kolejowa S.A.
  • PGE Energetyka Kolejowa Obsługa Sp. z o.o.
  • PGE Energetyka Kolejowa Holding Sp. z o.o.
  • PGE Energetyka Kolejowa CUW Sp. z o.o.
  • PGE Polska Grupa Energetyczna S.A.,
  • PGE Baltica,
  • PGE Systemy,
  • PGE Dom Maklerski.

The Other PGE Group companies that are assessed as likely to have a significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions will be successively included in the carbon footprint calculation process. Such an impact assessment is carried out annually.

Noteworthy are the actions taken by the PGE Group in 2022 and 2023 to improve and make more realistic the calculation of the carbon footprint within the scope of category 7: “Employee commuting” As part of the Employee Opinion Survey (EOS) addressed to selected PGE Group companies, specific questions were introduced into the survey on issues related to employee commuting to and from work. The questions were designed to elicit responses at the level required for carbon footprint calculations, using the dedicated IT tool. By obtaining data as early as 2022, it was possible to use real data from employees in this area for the selected companies. Importantly, a significant number of employees participate in the Employee Opinion Survey. The companies boast a high attendance rate – depending on the company, it even exceeds 90 percent. This makes the answers given by the employees of a given company reflect the actual circumstances.

The carbon footprint calculation data for the whole PGE Group broken down by individual emission bands and biogenic emissions (not included in the carbon footprint):

PGE Group’s carbon footprint (t CO2e) 2023 2022 2021
Scope 1
Fuels, including: 56,551,970 69,370,331 70,169,857
– lignite 34,422,711 45,581,652 42,692,766
– hard coal 19,713,698 22,018,088 25,083,918
– natural gas 1,919,481 1,331,587 1,954,130
– other fuels 496,081 439,363 439,043
Process emissions 655,104 807,646 764,718
Refrigerants and other gases 169,958 210,809 51,836
Total scope 1 57,377,033 70,389,145 70,986,410
inclduing EU-ETS emissions (%) 99.3 99.5 99.7
Scope 2 Market-based
1, including: 		2,144,977 2,196,571 2,183,395 
Electricity losses in transmission and distribution 1,279,482 1,322,593 1,379,892
Purchased electricity for own use 819,748 828,318 759,699
Purchased heat for own use 45,746 
 45,660 43,804
Scope 2 Location-based
2 		2,145,271 2,196,976 2,183,836
Scope 3
Category 3. Energy- and fuel-related emissions 22,018,550 23,116,540 22,191,648
Category 1. Purchased goods and services 1,136,201 497,790 821,824
Category 10. Processing of products sold 802,389 756,132 755,065
Category 2. Capital goods 291,202 252,844 508,996
Category 4. Upstream – transport and distribution 542,599 329,133 259,805
Category 5. Waste resulting from activities 169,011 84,809 75,014
Category 11. Use of products sold 104,237 40,640 74,949
Category 7. Employee commuting 41,288 39,041 34,965
Category 6. Business trips 434 635 158
Total scope 3 25,105,913 25,117,565 24,722,424
Total scope 1 + scope 2 + scope 3 Market-based 84,627,922 97,703,281 97,892,230
Total scope 1 + scope 2 + scope 3 Location-based 84,628,217 97,703,685 97,892,671
Biogenic emissions 780,713 390,463 687,876
  1. 1 Scope 2 Market-based – emissions resulting from the consumption of purchased electricity, calculated on the basis of an index published by a specific energy retailer ↩︎
  2. 2 Scope 2 Location-based – emissions resulting from the consumption of purchased electricity. It is calculated on the basis of the average index for Poland, which represents the actual volume of emissions generated in the country. This index is published on the NEBMC website. ↩︎

In 2023, there was a 13.55 percent reduction in the carbon footprint relative to 2021, despite the inclusion of the Rail Power Engineering segment within the Group. There was a significant reduction of 19.2 percent in scope 1 and 1.8 percent in scope 2. Conventional power generation is responsible for 72.5 percent of the PGE Group’s calculated carbon footprint. Scope 3 represents approximately 29.7 percent of the total carbon footprint understood as the sum of scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3.

↓ 13,55 %

nastąpiła w 2023 roku redukcja śladu węglowego względem roku 2021

↓ 19,2 %

nastąpiła znacząca redukcja śladu węglowego w zakresie 1

↓ 1,8 %

nastąpiła redukcja śladu węglowego w zakresie 2

Greenhouse gas emissions in 2023 by the respective emission scopes [tCO2e]

Download XLS

Methodology and emission factors

The organisation’s performance data are monitored in accordance with the PGE Group’s implemented process for calculating the carbon footprint.

The emissions calculations were prepared in accordance with the following standards:

  • The Greenhouse Gas Protocol A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard Revised Edition-GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance,
  • Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard.

Biogenic emissions were identified and reported separately. Operational and/or financial control in the Group was used as a consolidation criterion, meaning that 100 percent of the companies’ emissions were attributed to the PGE Group.

The sources of emission factors were publications from the following databases:

The National Centre for Emissions Management

(KOBiZE)

the DEFRA database

(Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs)

European Environment Agency

(EEA)

Ecoinvent 3.6.the Global Warming Potential factors

for refrigerants were adopted according to the 5th Report of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)

By using a homogeneous approach to calculating the carbon footprint, the data will be comparable within the sector.