In Helix, you must add data on the utilities and emissions that occur at your factory site (e.g., electricity use, fuel combustion, water intake, and waste output). This information helps model the environmental impact of your production activities. This article covers the following topics:
What are usages and emissions?
How does the Usages & Emissions page work in Helix?
How to add usages and emissions?
Where to find different usage and emission categories?
What are usages and emissions?
Usages and emissions refer to the utilities and waste involved in producing your product; things like electricity, gas, water, fuel use, and waste streams.
You’ll model:
Utilities: Energy, fuels, water, heat.
Waste: Materials or water leaving the factory.
Direct emissions: Pollutants released directly into the environment by your own company activities (e.g., fumes from coating or VOCs from adhesives).
Direct extractions: Natural resources taken directly from the environment by your company (e.g., groundwater, sand, or other raw materials from nature).
This page covers data for your entire factory site. After adding usages and emissions, you can distribute them across processes and products.
How does the Usages & Emissions page work in Helix?
The Usages & Emissions page is organized according to the Greenhouse Gas (GHG)
Protocol (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Infographic showing Scope 1, 2, and 3 layout used in Helix.
Scope 1 – Direct emissions: On-site emissions from combustion or processes (e.g. painting).
Scope 2 – Indirect emissions: Purchased electricity and heat.
Scope 3 – Waste and transport: Waste disposal, wastewater treatment, upstream transport.
Note – Categorization differences: While our methodology is based on the GHG Protocol structure, it is tailored for product footprinting rather than company-wide GHG footprinting. As a result, there are subtle differences in the categorization of certain emissions sources.
How to add Usages and Emissions?
Figure 2: Usages & Emissions page; 1. Add a new footprint item, 2. Scope 1-3 items divided, 3. Select impact category.
Step 1: Open the Usages & Emissions page
Go to Input → 1. Company → 2. Usages & Emissions.
Step 2: Add a new footprint item
Click ‘Add new footprint item’ (See ‘1’ in Figure 2).
Step 3: Fill out the item details
In the pop-up that appears (Figure 3):
Select the GHG scope category (e.g., Scope 1 - Direct emissions).
(Optional) Select the relevant subgroup (e.g., 'Gas').
Search and select the item (e.g., ‘natural gas MJ (average Europe)’).
Enter the amount and select the unit.
Enter cost data (optional). If you want insights into true cost flows, you can fill in the total cost field for each usage. For example, use values from your company’s electricity or gas bill to reflect the actual financial expenditure related to each input.
Click ‘Add item’.
Note - Search for usages and emissions: You can use CTRL+F to make your search quick and efficient (e.g., 'natural gas’).
Once the impact item has been added, the emissions associated with the selected impact item are displayed in the overview (See ‘2’ in Figure 2). This associated emission can be displayed for several impact categories (See ‘3’ in Figure 2), which can be selected in the top right corner of the usage & emissions tab.
Figure 3: Pop-up for adding a new usage and emissions item.
Step 4: Repeat this process for each usage or emission flow
Example: Adding electricity use
To add your electricity consumption in Helix:
Click 'Add footprint item'.
Set the emission type to: Scope 2 - indirect emissions.
In the search bar, type: medium voltage electricity mix per country.
Press Ctrl + F to quickly search for your country (e.g. Netherlands).
Select: Electricity Mix Medium Voltage Netherlands.
Enter the amount used (e.g. in kWh).
Click 'Add item' to save it.
Figure 4: Example 1 - Adding electricity use.
Where to find different usage and emission categories?
Utility & heat
Most utilities & heat used at your site are found in the category ‘Scope 1 - Direct Emissions’ and ‘Scope 2 - Indirect Emissions’.
Under ‘Scope 1 - Direct Emissions’, you’ll find:
Combustion of fuels or gases for heat or internal transport (see ‘Direct fuel use’, ‘Gas’, and ‘Heating (other than gas)’).
Water used for processes or cooling (In Helix: tap water = ‘Water’; water from natural sources = ‘Direct Emissions’).
Under ‘Scope 2 - Indirect Emissions’, you’ll find:
Electricity (e.g., country average mixes, specific technologies or voltages, etc).
Waste
Waste is found in ‘Scope 3 cat. 5 - Waste generated in Operations’.
Data points are organized based on waste treatment technology (‘Incineration’, ‘Recycling’, ‘Landfill’) for material streams, and ‘Wastewater’ for waste water.
Waste is often treated off-site, which means you must include transport.
Find transport under ‘Scope 3 cat. 4 - Upstream transportation and distribution’ > ‘Common’.
Multiplying the amount of waste with a default distance representative for the country is usually sufficient.
Direct emissions
Is found under ‘Scope 1 - Direct Emissions’:
For direct emissions to the environment (e.g., resulting from processes like painting): Select the right subcategory (‘... to air’, ‘... to water’, ‘... to soil’). Use CTRL + F to search.
For direct extractions of natural resources (e.g., mining materials, cooling water from natural water bodies): Go to ‘Direct Extractions of Natural Resources’ and filter for the appropriate subcategory.
Note - Fuel combustion: There is no need to model direct emissions from fuel combustion separately - these are already included in the fuel energy datasets!
Next Steps
Once you’ve added your usages and emissions, Helix automatically links them to environmental impacts based on the selected datasets. You can now distribute these inputs across specific processes and products to complete your footprint model.
The next step is to add processes, so you can start allocating the usages and emissions to the processes involved in creating your products. Read more about that step in this article.
This article was written in close collaboration with Fabiënne de Bever:
