Data quality rating (DQR) and Primary data share (PDS)

To increase the meaningfulness and transparency of your product footprint, the Climate Hub lets you assess the data quality of your emission factors and activity data. Based on these assessments, the system calculates two key metrics:

Data Quality Rating (DQR): Describes how well the activity data and emission factors used represent the real situation in temporal, geographical, and technological terms.
Primary Data Share (PDS): Describes what share of your activity data and emission factors is based on primary data.

This gives you a comprehensive picture of your data quality. The feature helps you to systematically document the quality of your data, make uncertainties in your CO2 footprint transparent, make the use of primary data visible, identify improvement potential in your data collection, and meet requirements from Catena-X, PACT, and other standards.

1. Assessing emission factors

The quality of emission factors is captured through two separate assessment logics that influence different metrics.

1.1 Type of emission factor

The type of emission factor determines whether the emission factor counts as primary. Only a supplier-specific emission factor counts as primary and is therefore included in the calculation of the Primary Data Share.

Type	Description
Supplier-specific EF	Emission factor comes directly from the supplier
Activity-based EF (database)	Emission factor comes from a database and is based on physical quantities
Spend-based EF (database)	Emission factor comes from a database and is based on expenditure
Unknown / Other	Origin or methodology of the emission factor is unclear

For a supplier-specific emission factor, you can enter the exact Primary Data Share manually. If no value is provided, the system automatically assumes 50%. However, this value is only taken into account if the activity data is also classified as primary (see Section 3).

Note: If no type is specified, "Unknown / Other" is assumed automatically.

1.2 Temporal, geographical, and technological data quality

For each emission factor, you can additionally assess the data quality, which determines the data quality rating. The three dimensions assessed are temporal, geographical, and technological representativeness — each on a scale from 1 (very good) to 5 (very poor).

Note: If no assessment is made, "Very poor" is assumed automatically.

Temporal representativeness — How current is the emission factor compared to the reporting year?

Rating level	Definition
Very good	≤ 1 year
Good	> 1 year and ≤ 2 years
Sufficient	> 2 years and ≤ 3 years
Poor	> 3 years and ≤ 4 years
Very poor	> 4 years

Geographical representativeness — How well does the region of the emission factor match the region under consideration?

Rating level	Definition
Very good	The emission factor comes from the same region as the process under consideration (e.g. site-specific data).
Good	The emission factor matches the same country, but not exactly the same region (e.g. country-specific average data).
Sufficient	The emission factor refers to a larger region, not a specific country (e.g. European average data).
Poor	The emission factor is based on global average values without regional differentiation (e.g. global database values).
Very poor	The origin of the emission factor does not match the region under consideration or is unknown.

Technological representativeness — How well does the underlying technology of the emission factor used match the real process?

Rating level	Definition
Very good	The emission factor is based on the same technology as the process under consideration, directly at the same site (e.g. when measured data from your own facility is used).
Good	The emission factor is based on the same technology, but not exactly at site level (e.g. data from another plant of the same company).
Sufficient	The emission factor is based on general industry average data, e.g. a database value.
Poor	The emission factor is based on a comparable technology, e.g. using a similar material or process.
Very poor	The technology underlying the emission factor does not match the real process or is unknown.

2. Assessing the Activity Data

The quality of the activity data is assessed via the "Quality" column. The assessment is based on the two dimensions temporal and technological representativeness and is given on a scale from very good to very poor. Activity data counts as primary — and is only included in the Primary Data Share — when the quality is rated "Very good".

Rating level	Definition
Very good	Both dimensions very good.
Good	Both dimensions good or better.
Sufficient	Both dimensions sufficient or better.
Poor	At least one dimension poor.
Very poor	At least one dimension very poor.

Note: If no assessment is made, "Very poor" is assumed automatically.

Migration of existing reports: For existing reports, the previous rating levels are automatically migrated to the new scale:

New	Old
Very good	Record / Measurement
Good	Extrapolation
Sufficient	Spend-based
Poor	Estimate
Very poor	-

After migration, please check whether the transferred values correctly reflect your data and adjust them manually if needed. Please also note that you need to enter the new values in existing CSV files.

3. Primary Data Share (PDS)

The PDS is calculated from the quality of the activity data (Section 2) and the type of emission factor (Section 1.1). For each activity, the Primary Data Share is determined as follows:

Case	Primary Data Share
Supplier PDS available and activity primary	Use of the specified value
Activity and emission factor primary	50%
Otherwise	0%

If both the activity data and the emission factor are primary, but no specific supplier Primary Data Share is stored, the system assumes a Primary Data Share of 50%. You can improve this value by entering your supplier's actual Primary Data Share directly in the corresponding field.

The Primary Data Share across all activities is calculated as an emission-weighted average — activities with higher emissions have a greater influence on the result. Negative emissions are included in the calculation with their absolute contribution, so that both positive and negative emissions are weighted correctly. Otherwise, in an extreme case, the Primary Data Share could drop below 0% or exceed 100%.

Important: Since the Primary Data Share is based on the CO2e values incl. biogenic CO2 uptake, activities without this information are not taken into account.

Results

You can find the results under the "Analysis" → "Data Quality" tab. Use the two checkboxes to switch between Data Quality Rating and Primary Data Share.

The Primary Data Share is displayed per structural element as a horizontal bar chart. The colors show at a glance which range the Primary Data Share falls into:

Color	Range
Red	< 25%
Yellow	< 50%
Turquoise	< 80%
Green	> 80%

A high Primary Data Share shows that your footprint is based on a large share of real, reliable data and therefore offers a high level of transparency. A low Primary Data Share, on the other hand, indicates that databases or estimates were predominantly used, or that no information on the Primary Data Share was provided — here there is potential for improvement in your data collection.

4. Data Quality Rating (DQR)

The DQR is based on the quality of the activity data (Section 2) and the quality of the emission factors (Section 1.2). For each site, the DQR is first calculated for the three emission factor dimensions (columns 1–3) and for the activity data (column 4) as a weighted average; the absolute CO2e values incl. biogenic CO2 uptake serve as the weight. The aggregated DQR is then calculated as a weighted average of the four dimensions.

Important: Since the Data Quality Rating is based on the CO2e values incl. biogenic CO2 uptake, activities without this information are not taken into account.