Standardization Guidelines
Learn how Tracenable standardizes corporate energy data through consistent mapping and classification rules, ensuring energy reporting remains accurate, comparable, and aligned with global standards.
The Challenge: Lack of Standardization
Energy reporting varies widely across firms, sectors, and jurisdictions:
Units of Measure: Companies report in multiple physical units (kWh, liters, barrels, joules, tons of oil equivalent).
Classification of Energy Flows: Purchased, produced, consumed, or exported energy may be defined inconsistently.
Renewability Definitions: Some firms classify sources differently (e.g., biomass as renewable or not, depending on the jurisdiction).
Aggregation Rules: Some report only totals, others break down by source, technology, or flow type.
These discrepancies lead to major comparability gaps in corporate energy reporting and prevents meaningful cross-company benchmarking.
To address this, Tracenable applies a unified standardization logic that reconciles these inconsistencies, translating diverse corporate disclosures into a common energy accounting structure.
Tracenable’s Standardization Principles
Guideline 1: Normalize Units into a Standard Energy Unit
All values are converted into a single energy unit: joules (J). Whether reported in energy units (kWh, BTU) or physical units (liters, cubic meters), values are standardized using source-specific conversion factors.
This ensures comparability across disclosures, regardless of the original reporting unit.
Guideline 2: Map Energy Disclosure to Four Standardized Dimensions
All company-reported energy disclosure is normalized into four standardized dimensions to ensure consistency, comparability, and traceability across companies and jurisdictions:
Energy Source: Identifies the specific origin of the energy (e.g., coal, crude oil, natural gas, biomass, solar, wind, hydropower, or Total).
Energy Type: Distinguishes the form in which energy is reported, such as total energy, electricity, or heat.
Flow Type: Describes the pathway of energy relative to company operations: produced, purchased, consumed, sold/exported, held in reserves, or reported as production capacity.
Renewability – Indicates whether the energy is renewable, non-renewable, or reported only as a total category, based on company disclosures or the inherent nature of the source.
Guideline 3: Preserve Company-Reported Renewability Classifications
When a company explicitly classifies an energy source as renewable or non-renewable, we retain that classification as reported. This approach respects jurisdictional definitions and sector-specific reporting practices, i.e., renewability status is determined by the frameworks applicable to the reporting company.
If renewability is not specified or cannot be confidently determined, Tracenable applies default mappings based on the intrinsic characteristics of the energy source (e.g., natural gas is classified as Non-Renewable).
If a company classification or source-based mapping is not available, Tracenable does not guess. Instead, the energy is placed in a total category “Total Renewability” to keep the data clear and reliable.
Renewability classifications remain faithful to company disclosures whenever available. Default rules are applied only to fill gaps where no clear designation is provided.
Guideline 4: Preserve Company-Reported Energy Sources Granularity
When a company provides a detailed breakdown of energy sources (e.g., distinguishing between coal, natural gas, biomass, or solar), Tracenable preserves that granularity as reported. This ensures that company-level distinctions are not lost and that disclosures remain true to the original reporting.
If a company does not specify energy sources in detail, Tracenable applies standardized source categories. For example, if a company reports “fuels” without specifying further, the data is mapped to the appropriate aggregate category "Unknown Fuel Source .
Energy source classifications remain as detailed as possible, while still ensuring comparability and consistency when only partial information is available.
Guideline 5: Preserve Energy Flow Subcategories and Derive Flow Type Totals
Companies often disclose energy flows in parts rather than as unified totals. For instance, they may report separately the amounts of energy produced for internal consumption and those produced for sale. In such cases, Tracenable retains the reported subcategories while also deriving the corresponding aggregate.
In the background, we internally split the flows into inflows and outflows to derive the standardized flow type, without altering the company-reported values.
Example: If a company reports 400 GJ produced for consumption and 100 GJ produced for sale, Tracenable internally treats the 400 GJ as a Produced inflow and a Consumed outflow, and the 100 GJ as a Produced inflow and an Exported outflow. This internal inflow/outflow split is used only to derive the standardized Flow Type dimension. Both reported values are retained, and the totals are aggregated as follows:
Total Energy Produced = 500 GJ
Total Energy Consumed = 400 GJ
Total Energy Sold/Exported = 100 GJ
Takeaway:
Corporate energy disclosures vary widely in format, scope, and interpretation. Without a common standard, meaningful comparison and aggregation are impossible. Tracenable’s energy standardization framework addresses this challenge by:
Harmonizing units into a single universal energy measure (joules).
Aligning all disclosures under a consistent structure of standardized dimensions: Source, Type, Flow, and Renewability.
Respecting company-reported classifications while filling unavoidable data gaps through transparent, rule-based logic.
Preserving reported granularity to maintain traceability and analytical richness.
By applying these principles, Tracenable transforms fragmented, inconsistent disclosures into a unified dataset that is comparable across companies, sectors, and jurisdictions—providing a clear, credible foundation for sustainability and climate analysis.