Regions
The geographical location of an emission-generating activity or the location of financial expenditure is important when it comes to carbon emissions estimations.
Different farming and production practices, electricity grid makeups, and other regional factors can make a big difference in how much the same activity emits. Every Climatiq emission factor specifies a region it is valid for.
Climatiq allows you to define the region of an activity in two ways:
- Region Codes: These are text-based identifiers that define the geographic scope.
- Location Objects: These provide more flexible ways to input precise location data.
Region Code
A region code in Climatiq is a way to represent a geographical area. This identifier shows up in emission factors and can be used as input for various endpoints. Region codes come in two different formats:
Country-Level Region Code
The most common format for region codes is the country-level region code. It is a two-letter country code, like DK for Denmark or GB for Great Britain.
Apart from the special cases (see below), these codes follow the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard (opens in a new tab).
The majority of emission factors are applicable at the country level. This means that when you are using a region code for input, the country-level region codes is often detailed enough. Using an extended region code will often not lead to more accurate estimations.
Extended Region Code
When you need more precision, Climatiq supports specifying an extended region code, consisting of two parts. The first part is a country-level region code, and the second is an extension. The two parts are separated by a hyphen(-).
Extensions can be:
- ISO-3166-2 (opens in a new tab) subdivision codes: Representing states, provinces, or similar administrative regions.
- A UN/LOCODE (opens in a new tab) representing locations such as cities, airports, railway stations and similar.
Examples:
US-CAfor California, United StatesUS-NYfor New York State, United StatesUS-NYCfor New York City, United StatesGB-LNDfor London, United Kingdom
For the most part, you will only see extended region codes when dealing with:
- Large countries where emissions vary significantly from state to state, such as the United States.
- When using the UN/LOCODEs for a specific location, in travel or freight-related endpoints.
Sometimes emissions data applies in ways that are not covered by the above standards. In cases like that you might see region strings that have values in them that do not follow the standards.
Some examples of these region codes are:
EUfor emission factors applicable within the European UnionGLOBALfor emission factors that are applicable globallyUS-AKGDis the region covering the ASCC Alaska power GridROW_WFis for emission factors that cover "Africa except Egypt and South Africa"
Some of these special cases might have underscore in the names. Underscores do not necessarily mean it is a extended region code, as only hyphens denote that.
Location
Scenarios that require a higher level of precision, which is often when dealing with shipping or travel, Climatiq supports Location objects. These allow you to specify specific locations in different ways, based on the data you have available.
Query Location
A Query Location allows Climatiq to search for a match based on free-text input, such as addresses or city names. It is particularly useful for unstructured data.
| Query Location Attributes | Required |
|---|---|
| query string A free text description of the location, like "Berlin, Germany", or "10 Downing Street". | optional |
| country string The 2-letter ISO-3166 country code (opens in a new tab) for a given location. | optional |
| postal_code string The postal (or zip) code for the location. If used, country must also be specified. | optional |
At least one of the following is required:
queryalonecountry + postal_code
Not all countries have support for postal codes, and the format might be different from country to country. See this table (opens in a new tab) for details on postal codes.
IATA Code Location
An IATA Code Location allow you to search for locations using IATA airport codes.
| IataLocation Attributes | Required |
|---|---|
| iata string An IATA airport code. | required |
UN/LOCODE Location
A UN/LOCODE location allows you to use an extended region code to find a location.
| UNLocode Location Attributes | Required |
|---|---|
| locode string An extended region code like DE-BER for Berlin. It must be an extended region code with the second part being a UN/LOCODE. | required |
Coordinate Location
A Coordinate Location lets you use latitude and longitude to define a location, and you can optionally include a country code.
| Coordinate Location Attributes | Required |
|---|---|
| longitude float The longitude of the coordinate. | required |
| latitude float The latitude of the coordinate. | required |
| country string Climatiq automatically determines the country the coordinates are within. If the automatically determined country is wrong, you can override this selection by supplying a 2-letter country code. | optional |