GO multiple
A Guarantee of Origin certifies that one MWh of renewable electricity was produced in a given country. What that MWh displaces depends on the grid it was fed into: on average, one MWh of that country's generation mix. The multiple compares two such grids:
GO multiple(X vs base) = intensity(X) ÷ intensity(base)
with intensity the period's production-based lifecycle figure on the map (g CO2e/kWh = kg CO2e per MWh, so per GO). A GO from a country at 4× displaces four times the CO2e of a GO from the base. The drawings in How the GO index works walk through it.
Displaced, not abated. To abate is to cut emissions below what they would otherwise have been, and avoided emissions, the accounting term, rests on the same counterfactual: both belong to an action that changes what runs — new capacity — and are measured at the margin, by the plant it pushes off. To displace is what any clean MWh does on the grid it feeds: it takes the place of one MWh of that grid's mix. The multiple compares what a clean MWh displaces in two countries; whether buying the GO abates anything is the additionality question below.
Hour-matched basis (Solar GO, Wind GO). A grid's intensity changes hour by hour, and a solar or wind MWh only arrives in the hours that technology produces. The hour-matched intensity weights every hour's grid intensity by what the technology produced in it — the country's hour, all its bidding zones summed — and the multiple then compares like with like, a solar GO with a solar GO. Solar is ENTSO-E B16 (and NESO's solar); wind is B18, B19 and NESO's two wind series. Where a TSO reports only part of a country's solar as solar, the figure weighs that part's hours on a grid missing the rest, and reads high: the Netherlands is the clear case — TenneT files most Dutch solar as "other", and the Dutch solar-hours figure reads high by 71–83 % (2025). Elsewhere it leans with whatever else is missing in those hours: missing rooftop solar makes it read high (Slovenia and Croatia by about 13–17 %), missing cogeneration and waste incineration make it read low (Sweden by 39–46 %, Switzerland by 26–35 %, Austria by 20–24 %) (2025). See generation coverage.
Isolar = Σh solarh × Ih ÷ Σh solarh, Ih = emissionsh ÷ generationh
What it is not. Both bases are average-emissions, location-based views. It does not model the marginal plant an extra MWh displaces — usually gas or coal, often across a border, which makes clean grids' GOs worth more than their average suggests. It ignores the certificate's own lifecycle footprint (11–48 g/kWh depending on technology), which weighs most against the cleanest grids. And it says nothing about additionality: a GO from a plant that would run anyway changes nobody's dispatch. Read it as a comparison of grids, not a claim about any one certificate.
Emissions and intensity
Emission factors
IPCC AR5 Working Group III, Annex III (2014) — lifecycle median emission factors in gCO2eq/kWh, applied per ENTSO-E production type (PSR code). These are the academic-LCA consensus medians; other public dashboards (Electricity Maps, Ember, EEA) use their own factor sets — most are broadly consistent with AR5 but you will not match them digit-for-digit.
AR5 gives one figure for coal (820, used here for hard coal) and none for lignite, peat, oil shale, coal-derived gas or waste-to-energy; those take the values in the table. Every factor the figures are computed with:
| Production type | ENTSO-E code | g CO2e/kWh |
|---|---|---|
| Fossil Oil shale | B07 | 1,200 |
| Fossil Brown coal/Lignite | B02 | 1,054 |
| Fossil Peat | B08 | 1,000 |
| Fossil Oil | B06 | 840 |
| Fossil Hard coal | B05 | 820 |
| Fossil Gas | B04 | 490 |
| Fossil Coal-derived gas | B03 | 360 |
| Waste | B17 | 330 |
| Biomass | B01 | 230 |
| Solar | B16 | 48 |
| Geothermal | B09 | 38 |
| Hydro Run-of-river and poundage | B11 | 24 |
| Hydro Water Reservoir | B12 | 24 |
| Marine | B13 | 17 |
| Nuclear | B14 | 12 |
| Wind Offshore | B18 | 12 |
| Wind Onshore | B19 | 11 |
Not counted: Hydro Pumped Storage (B10), Other renewable (B15), Other (B20), AC Link (B21), DC Link (B22), Substation (B23), Transformer (B24), Energy storage (B25).
Lifecycle vs direct
AR5 factors include upstream fuel cycle, plant construction, and decommissioning, so numbers here will exceed published direct combustion inventories (e.g. RTE, UBA, Eurostat) by 20–60 % in low-fossil zones. Same ranking, different absolute level. If you need direct-combustion totals for compliance reporting, use the Member-State inventory.
Biomass (B01) = 230 kgCO2eq/MWh
The AR5 sustainable-forestry lifecycle median. Operational combustion is biogenic-neutral by IPCC convention; the lifecycle factor captures upstream silviculture and processing. Co-firing and wood-pellet feedstocks run materially higher (up to ~740). Treat 230 as a lower-bound for the EU biomass mix.
Waste-to-energy (B17) = 330 kgCO2eq/MWh
Lower-bound fossil-fraction approximation. EU municipal-solid-waste typically averages closer to 500 once plastic content is properly counted; full range in the literature is 330–700+. Note: in the res_share derivation, B17 counts as renewable (ENTSO-E's source-substrate taxonomy). Here it emits at the fossil-fraction factor. Both views are intentional.
Excluded from output
Pumped storage (B10), energy storage (B25), transmission assets (B21–B24), "other" (B20), and unknown PSR codes (B99) carry no factor — no primary combustion at the asset itself, and pricing storage dispatch would double-count emissions already attributed to the source fuel that charged it.
Scope
Production-based: emissions are attributed to the bidding zone where generation occurs. Cross-border traded electricity is attributed to the producing zone, not the consuming one. Consumption-based / flow-tracing attribution (what Electricity Maps shows on its live map) is on the roadmap as a separate view.
Raw input
ENTSO-E Transparency Platform generation_per_type for every zone except Great Britain (PT15M for most zones; aggregated to hourly via average MW × 1 hour before multiplying by the factor, so the result is faithful regardless of whether the source publishes in quarters, half-hours, or full hours).
Great Britain reads a different source
ENTSO-E stopped publishing GB generation on 2021-06-15 (post-Brexit), so GB uses the NESO Data Portal generation mix (half-hourly, 2009 → now) for all years — one consistent source, no mid-2021 splice; the two sources agree within ~0.3% on comparable fuels over their overlap. NESO includes modelled estimates of embedded (distribution-connected) solar and wind — the generation that is invisible to ENTSO-E everywhere else — so GB totals sit closer to the national inventory than other zones, at the price of those two components being estimates rather than meterings. NESO's wind splits by connection level, not technology: transmission-connected wind (~75–80% offshore) takes the AR5 offshore median, embedded wind the onshore median. Net interconnector imports and net storage discharge are excluded, same as storage everywhere else. Supported by National Energy SO Open Data.
Ireland is the whole island
Ireland and Northern Ireland trade as one Single Electricity Market (bidding zone IE_SEM), so the map draws Northern Ireland with Ireland, and Great Britain's figure is GB only.
Periods
A country's year is shown only when every one of its bidding zones has twelve complete months; sub-zones are summed into their country (Italy has seven). In the bidding-zone view each zone stands on its own twelve months, so a zone can show a year its country does not. Last 12 months is the twelve most recent complete months — a month counts once it ended at least ten days ago, so late publishers have landed — under the same rule; its "change" compares it with the twelve months before. The map's data is recomputed when new generation lands and served from a stored snapshot, so it is there at once.
Generation coverage — where ENTSO-E misses part of a country
ENTSO-E's generation per production type is what TSOs report. Two things keep a country short of its national statistics. Plants on distribution grids and self-consumed output — rooftop solar, small cogeneration, small hydro — are often not reported at all (EC review of the Transparency Platform). And some TSOs file part of their output as "other" (B20): no single emission factor fits a mix, so it is left out here. Every country's Mt and TWh are therefore lower bounds — a fully reported grid still lands somewhat below a national total that counts plants' own use and small plants — and where the missing power is cleaner or dirtier than the rest, the intensity leans with it: missing solar or hydro makes it read high, missing gas or biomass cogeneration low. The per-MWh factors are right; the missing piece is generation.
† marks the countries where we measured the gap as material: served generation below 80 % of a national total, or an intensity at least 20 % off a full-coverage estimate on every estimate made. The national totals are official statistics: Eurostat's net production by fuel, DESNZ for Great Britain and Northern Ireland, SFOE for Switzerland and CBS for the Netherlands; Sweden's four zones are each measured against SCB's net production by electricity area. Pumped-storage output counts on both sides, since the statistics fold much of it into hydro. A full-coverage estimate adds the reference's missing volume back, fuel by fuel, at this page's own factors; the solar-hours one adds every gap back month by month, in the hours its fuel produces.
Three cases show the mechanisms. Italy, 2025: Terna's data misses embedded gas cogeneration, small hydro and part of the solar, and files about 15 TWh as "other"; the missing mix is about as carbon-intensive as the rest, so Italy's intensity is right and its Mt about a quarter low. A country total must sum every one of its bidding zones — Italy has seven (IT_NORD, IT_CNOR, IT_CSUD, IT_SUD, IT_CALA, IT_SICI, IT_SARD). The Netherlands, 2025: TenneT files about 39 TWh as "other" — most Dutch solar, much of the onshore wind and some cogeneration — and about 13 TWh more, mostly rooftop solar, is not reported at all. ENTSO-E serves 60 % of CBS's net production and 2 % of its solar; nuclear and offshore wind match CBS, while onshore wind is at 43 % and gas at 75 %. The Dutch intensity here reads about a quarter high (369 against about 291 g/kWh with CBS's volumes at these factors), and its solar-hours figure high by 71–83 % (304 against 166–178). Sweden, 2025: SCB's figures put over half of Sweden's biomass and waste cogeneration in SE3 and about a fifth each in SE2 and SE4; in SE4 it is a quarter of the zone's generation. Svenska kraftnät files the part it meters as "other" and the rest is not reported, so every Swedish zone reads low — SE1 and SE2 by 21–33 %, SE3 by 55–59 %, SE4 by 76–78 % — and the zone view's order turns over: counted, SE3 (about 33–36 g/kWh) sits above SE1 and SE2 (26–30), and SE4 (72–80) is the highest.
Map
Country shapes from Natural Earth (public domain), drawn in the EU's equal-area projection (ETRS89-LAEA), so no country looks bigger — or dirtier — than it is.
Bidding zones. The zone view cuts each split country's shape along its zone borders, so the coastline stays the country view's. Italy's zones follow regions, grouped as GME lists them; before 1 January 2021 Umbria was in Centre-North and Calabria in South (ARERA 103/2019), and earlier years are drawn that way. Denmark splits at the Great Belt: DK1 is Jutland and Funen, DK2 Zealand, Lolland-Falster and Bornholm (Energinet); both from Natural Earth's regions. Norway's five areas are NVE's bidding-area map, which follows the grid's bottlenecks rather than county lines — contains data under the Norwegian licence for Open Government data (NLOD) distributed by NVE. Sweden's four follow grid areas, not counties, and no official boundary file is published: their outlines are entsoe-py's hand-drawn approximation (MIT License, © 2017 EnergieID cvba-so), straight lines between the points where the borders meet the coasts and the Norwegian border. All are overview borders, not for locating a site.