Fugitive emissions are gases that escape rather than being burned. For most organisations this means refrigerant leaking from air conditioning and refrigeration.

They sit in Scope 1. They are small for an office business and significant for anyone with cold storage, food retail or a large plant.

You report the gas that leaked during the period, not the gas sitting in the equipment.

A unit holding 20 kg of refrigerant that lost nothing this year contributes nothing.

The figure you want is how much refrigerant was added to equipment during the period. A technician recharging a unit is replacing what escaped.

Your service records hold this. Ask your refrigeration contractor for a report by site and gas type.

Recharged, not reclaimed. Some service reports show both. Reclaimed gas is what was recovered from a unit before servicing, which is gas that did not escape. If a report shows 5 kg reclaimed and 7.5 kg recharged, the 7.5 kg is your figure.

Estimate. A common approach is to apply an industry leak rate to the total charge of your equipment, which needs an asset register listing each unit, its gas type and its charge size.

Where you have no asset register either, estimate from floor area using an intensity from a comparable site.

Either way, record the method. See Estimate what you cannot measure.

This is the case that causes the most confusion.

If your landlord owns and services the air conditioning, ask two questions. Who has operational control of the equipment, and does your consolidation approach put it in your boundary?

Under operational control, equipment you do not control is not your Scope 1. Under financial control, it follows the lease. Either way it may still be Scope 3 as an upstream leased asset.

See Choose your consolidation approach.

Do not report the same refrigerant as both your Scope 1 and your landlord's.

Include every unit in your boundary, not only the large ones.

Small units in server rooms are easy to forget, and they leak. A commercial building air conditioning system serving your floor may belong to the landlord. A single split system in a back office is yours.

Refrigerant gases have very high global warming potentials, and the values changed between assessment reports. A site with meaningful refrigerant losses can move noticeably between AR5 and AR6.

Check which version you are using before you compare years. See Global warming potential: AR5, AR6 and NGER.

Upload the quantities as activity data, in kilograms by gas type, against a Method configured for fugitive emissions.

Each gas needs its own factor. R404A and R410A are different gases with different potentials, so do not combine them into one line.

Sulphur hexafluoride in electrical switchgear, and methane from wastewater or landfill, are also fugitive. Both are reported the same way, as quantity released.