Simulation

Discover the effects of an emission reduction strategy on the total emissions for the company.

The simulation tool provides a way to model potential changes in emissions based on expected changes to the activity data.

Each simulation runs for a set number of years and uses a specific year of actual inventory data as a starting point.

The simulation is broken down into Groups, Actions, and Manipulations.

Example of a simulation tree (node types are annotated in purple)

Manipulations

Starting with the most fundamental level, manipulations define a value change on a set of entries in the inventory.

For each manipulation, you can define which entries are relevant by selecting an activity category and organizational unit. You are also able to edit the value change to be applied and the start and end date for that change.

For example, say the intention is to reduce business flights across the whole company by 80% after 10 years. The simulation will identify the flight activity entries and calculate how much each would have to decrease to get to 20% by the end of the period, and what the resulting totals are.

Manipulations can be defined in a few ways:

• % per year - You define the percent change that should be applied each year of the simulation. Note, a reduction is given as a negative.

-10% per year

• % by final year - You define the percent different between the starting and ending totals. Note, a reduction is given as a negative.

-50% by final year

• tCO₂e by final year - You define the final tCO₂e value of the relevant emissions in the final year. The reduction is split evenly across the simulated years.

10 tCO₂e by final year

Actions

Actions group manipulations together. Typically, an action will consist of manipulations that interact in some way and are essentially what one might think of when identifying potential reduction strategies. For example, electrifying a fleet of vehicles will involve two manipulations; one to reduce the fuel consumption to zero, and the other to account for the increase in electricity costs.

We have provided several Template Actions that you will need to use as a starting point when constructing your simulation.

Add an action based on several templates provided

To assist with the review of simulations and their results, we have included the option to toggle Actions on and off as needed. This means that you don't need to delete and then re-add the action each time you want to compare the two states.

Groups

Groups simply allow you to group actions by concept (although additional functionality is in the pipeline).

Whenever a change is made to the simulation or underlying data, you will need to run the simulation to include those changes.

Once you have run the simulation, you can review the outcomes from the Graphs tab.

Graph of the previously described example simulation