One Year of Energy Data, Four Obligations

Introduction

A facility in Abu Dhabi that burns gas or diesel, buys grid electricity and draws water is asked for the same numbers up to four times a year.

• An energy audit wants to know where the energy goes.
• A corporate Scope 1 and 2 inventory, under the GHG Protocol or ISO 14064-1, wants the emissions that energy causes.
• EAD’s annual environmental data report, through Template 9, Annual Resource Consumption, wants the annual fuel, electricity and water totals.
• EAD’s facility MRV report wants the Scope 1 emissions from fuel combustion and processes, and from Reporting Year 2026 it wants them verified.

Many facilities answer the four separately, often through different people, at different times, from different spreadsheets. The figures drift apart, and the drift surfaces when someone compares them. From 2027 that someone is an accredited verifier working to reasonable assurance. The fix is to collect once, to the standard of the strictest user, and generate every report from the same dataset.

Not every facility carries all four. Facility MRV applies to covered sectors, with full MRV at 25,000 tCO2e of Scope 1 a year and a filing duty below it. The annual environmental data report applies to EAD-permitted facilities. Abu Dhabi does not mandate energy audits as such (what is and is not mandated), and a corporate inventory is driven by listing rules, lenders and customers. An industrial site in Abu Dhabi in a covered sector can meet all four.

The four users, and what each wants

1. The energy audit

An energy audit asks where, when and why energy is used, so it needs data below the annual total: consumption by system and major consumer, interval data that shows the load profile, operating hours, and production figures to normalise against. An annual electricity bill tells an auditor almost nothing about a chiller plant; a month of 15-minute sub-meter data tells a great deal. The current international standard is ISO 50002-1:2025, which replaced the withdrawn ISO 50002:2014 and was developed from ISO 50002:2014 and EN 16247-1:2022. See our energy audit service and the manufacturing plant audit article.

2. The corporate Scope 1 and 2 inventory

The corporate inventory takes an organisational boundary, set by control or equity share, across every site the company has. Scope 1 covers fuel combustion, process emissions, vehicles and fugitive emissions such as refrigerant losses. Scope 2 covers purchased electricity, multiplied by a grid emission factor. The GHG Protocol and ISO 14064-1 cover the same ground with different emphasis.

The grid factor is the item most often taken from the wrong year or the wrong utility.

• Dubai: DEWA’s grid emission factor for electricity for 2025 is 0.3833 tCO2e/MWh, published in the DEWA Sustainability Report 2025. Use the electricity series, not the combined electricity and water figure.
• Abu Dhabi: we hold no explicit current-year grid factor published by EWEC. EWEC’s Decarbonisation Journey (November 2023) gives a power-only intensity of 0.33 tCO2/MWh for 2019 and states that power emissions intensity is 40 per cent lower than in 2019, which yields about 0.198 tCO2/MWh. That is arithmetic on EWEC’s statements, not a published factor, and it should be labelled as derived wherever it is used. Where the utility can supply a factor for your account, use it.

3. EAD Template 9, Annual Resource Consumption

Under Decree No. (1) of 2024 on environmental data reporting, EAD-permitted facilities submit an environmental data report in the first quarter of each year, prepared by an EAD-approved environmental consultancy office. The report is made through ten Electronic Data Deliverables, and Template 9 carries the energy and water half: one row per resource per year.

• Fuel: natural gas, petrol, diesel
• Energy: electricity
• Water: fresh water, marine water, groundwater

Amounts are annual, in units chosen from a fixed list: litres, tonnes or cubic metres per year, and electricity labelled “MW/year”. No emissions are calculated. The full report is covered in EAD’s annual environmental data report.

4. The EAD facility MRV report

EAD’s facility MRV system is narrower than a corporate inventory and stricter about evidence. It covers Scope 1 only, and the template captures carbon dioxide and methane. Operators apply the operational control approach, each geographically separate site submits its own report, and only physically contiguous or adjacent sites may be reported together. Grid electricity factors are expressly not required.

The calculation approach multiplies activity data by an emission factor and an oxidation factor, with fuel activity data expressed in terajoules on a net calorific value basis or in tonnes or normal cubic metres. For gas, calorific values provided by the supplier are acceptable. Activity data is held to tiers of maximum permissible uncertainty, from ±7.5 per cent at Tier 1 to ±1.5 per cent at Tier 4. From Reporting Year 2026 the report is verified by an accredited verifier to reasonable assurance; choosing that verifier is a separate decision with its own timetable.

Where the four differ

	Energy audit	Corporate inventory	EAD Template 9	EAD facility MRV
Boundary	The site or systems audited	The organisation, all sites, by control or equity	The permitted facility	Each facility, operational control
Scope	All energy carriers	Scope 1 and 2	Resource use, no emissions	Scope 1 only
Gases	Not applicable	All GHGs, including refrigerants	None	CO2 and CH4
Water	Where in scope	No	Yes, by source	No
Granularity	Sub-metered, interval, load profiles	Annual by source, monthly helps	Annual totals	Annual by source stream, tiered uncertainty
Who checks	The auditor	Assurance provider, usually limited assurance	EAD, report prepared by an approved office	Accredited verifier, reasonable assurance

One data item, four uses

This is the table worth pinning to the wall of whoever owns the data.

Data item	Energy audit	Scope 1 and 2 inventory	EAD Template 9	EAD facility MRV
Natural gas (meter, supplier invoices, calorific value)	Use by boiler, furnace or turbine; monthly or interval	Scope 1 combustion	Fuel, natural gas, annual volume	Source stream; activity data via net calorific value; supplier’s calorific value acceptable
Diesel (deliveries, tank dips, generator and equipment logs)	Generator and plant run hours, fuel per unit of output	Scope 1, stationary and mobile	Fuel, diesel, litres per year	Fuel consumed, adjusted for opening and closing stock; generators, forklifts and site vehicles under operational control
Petrol (fuel cards, fleet logs)	Fleet efficiency, where in scope	Scope 1 mobile	Fuel, petrol	Vehicles used for facility operations under operational control; not third-party deliveries
Grid electricity (utility meter, bills, sub-meters)	The core dataset: sub-metered, load profile, peak demand	Scope 2, times the grid factor	Energy, electricity	Not reported
Self-generated power (gas turbine, gensets)	Generation efficiency	The fuel is Scope 1; no Scope 2 for it	Report the fuel used	Fuel going in, not exhaust coming out
Water (fresh, marine, groundwater)	Pumping, cooling tower and treatment energy	Not a GHG line	Water by source, cubic metres per year	Not reported
Process inputs (carbonates, reductants, feedstock carbon)	Rarely	Scope 1 process emissions	Not reported	Process source stream, or mass balance
Refrigerant top-ups (service records)	Chiller condition indicator	Scope 1 fugitive	Not reported	Not reported: CO2 and CH4 only
Production output	Normalisation, for example kWh per tonne	Intensity metrics	Not reported	Product and production information requested for benchmarking; does not change the calculation
Meter register and calibration certificates	Data reliability	Evidence for assurance	Supports the approved office’s report	Required in the monitoring plan’s QA and QC section

Collect once, to the standard of the strictest user

The strictest user is not the same for every data item. For granularity, it is the energy audit: monthly or interval data by system. For evidence, it is the MRV verifier: a documented trail from meter to reported figure that someone outside the business can reproduce. For coverage, it is the union of all four, which brings water in through Template 9 and refrigerants in through the corporate inventory.

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Collect at the audit’s granularity, document to the verifier’s standard, and every lighter report becomes a sum or a subset of the same data.

In practice that means seven disciplines.

1. A meter register. Every meter and gauge, what it measures, where it sits, its serial number, its calibration date and certificate, and which reports it feeds. EAD’s guidance asks facilities that rely on a single meter for a process to say so in the report, and asks the monitoring plan to describe how measuring equipment is calibrated and checked.
2. Monthly reconciliation. Meter readings against supplier invoices against purchase records, every month, with differences explained. EAD’s guidance expects internal review to include comparing reported fuel consumption with purchase records. Doing it monthly turns a year-end investigation into a routine check.
3. Stock discipline for stored fuels. Opening and closing tank levels, delivery notes and transfers out, as above.
4. Fuel quality records. Keep the supplier’s calorific value and composition statements for each period, and know whether a calorific value is quoted on a gross or net basis before it goes near a calculation that expects net.
5. Unit discipline. Hold electricity and fuel energy in MWh, and volumes in the units the meter reads. Convert only at the point of reporting. Template 9 labels electricity “MW/year”, which is a power unit rather than an energy unit; report in the template’s units, but keep the underlying data in MWh so the figure can be reconciled.
6. One master dataset. Every report is generated from it, never re-keyed. The MRV template asks operators to flag inconsistencies between facility figures and those reported at national level. A facility’s fuel use should appear as the same number in Template 9, in the MRV report and in the site line of the corporate inventory, and any difference should be explained by boundary, not by error.
7. Retention. Keep records for at least five years. Federal Decree-Law No. 11 of 2024 requires five years, Decree No. (1) of 2024 requires at least five, and EAD’s MRV guidance requires corrections to be retained for at least five. Decree No. (1) of 2024 also requires EAD to be notified within three days of any defect affecting reporting, which is worth building into the procedure for a failed meter.

How ESGweise helps

ESGweise builds the master dataset and the controls around it: the meter register, monthly reconciliation, stock adjustment and the evidence trail. From that dataset we prepare the corporate Scope 1 and 2 inventory, draft the MRV monitoring plan and populate EAD’s MRV template, and prepare the Template 9 data for the EAD-approved environmental consultancy office that signs the annual environmental data report. We carry out energy audits and chiller audits on the same data, and run verification readiness reviews before an accredited verifier arrives.

Where a regulator requires an approved office or an accredited verifier, the facility needs one; our work is the data and evidence behind it. We also provide independent assurance under ISAE 3000 and ISO 14064-3 on corporate sustainability reporting, where we have not prepared the information being assured.

References and sources

• Environment Agency, Abu Dhabi, Technical Guidance for Facility Level Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Abu Dhabi Emirate, 27 February 2026, Doc ID EAD-IEPP, Rev. No. 02, including FAQ Q6, Q7, Q9, Q19, Q20 and Q23, and Appendix 1
• EAD Facility Level MRV Reporting Portal
• EAD, Self-Monitoring and Reporting Program, including the Electronic Data Deliverables (Template 9, Annual Resource Consumption, v4)
• Abu Dhabi Media Office, Hamdan bin Zayed issues resolution on reporting environmental data in the emirate, 7 April 2024 (Decree No. 1 of 2024)
• Federal Decree-Law No. (11) of 2024 on the Reduction of Climate Change Effects, Article 6
• DEWA Sustainability Report 2025, Summary of Emissions, grid emission factor for electricity
• EWEC, Decarbonisation Journey, November 2023
• GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard, and ISO 14064-1:2018
• ISO 50002-1:2025, Energy audits, Part 1: General requirements with guidance for use

Conclusion

The four obligations ask different questions of the same meters. Treating them as four data collections produces four answers, and from Reporting Year 2026 one of those answers has to survive reasonable assurance. Treating them as one dataset, collected at the energy audit’s granularity and documented to the verifier’s standard, turns three of the four reports into arithmetic. The work that makes the MRV report verifiable is the work that makes the energy audit credible, and it only has to be done once.