Understanding the Sustainability dashboard

The Sustainability dashboard shows the environmental impact of charging across your network — how much CO₂ your drivers avoided versus driving a petrol or diesel car, how much CO₂ the charging itself emitted, and how clean the energy was. It's built to help you report on CO₂ and renewable-energy performance. This dashboard is in early access, so it may not be available to every operator yet.

Where to find it

In Hub, go to Analytics → Sustainability (/sustainability). Tabs are Overview, Data & method, and Grid conditions.

Overview has the headline KPI cards, Impact over time, and Breakdown (Location, Account, Country, AC-DC, EVSE). If Breakdown fails to load, that is not the same as no sessions.

Grid conditions includes Generation mix (stacked area, country + bidding zone), plus Carbon intensity and Renewable share daily lines.

The headline figures

• CO₂ avoided — estimated CO₂ your charging saved compared with the same distance driven in an equivalent combustion (petrol/diesel) vehicle.
• CO₂ emitted — the CO₂ produced generating the electricity you delivered, based on the local grid's carbon intensity.
• Energy delivered — total energy (kWh) charged in the period.
• Average grid intensity — how clean the electricity was on average, in grams of CO₂ per kWh, weighted by how much energy each session used.
• Renewable share — the share of delivered energy that came from renewable sources.
• Smart-charging avoided — extra CO₂ avoided by shifting charging to cleaner hours through smart charging.

Each figure also shows how it compares with the previous period.

Impact over time

A chart plots CO₂ emitted and CO₂ avoided across the period, with a line beneath showing data coverage — how much of your energy the figures are based on.

Breakdown

A table breaks the same figures down by Location, Account, Country, AC / DC, or individual charge point. For each row you see energy, CO₂ avoided, CO₂ emitted, grid intensity, coverage and number of sessions — so you can see which sites or countries drive your footprint.

Coverage and "Not configured"

Not every session has the data needed for every figure — some countries may not have a grid-intensity value, for example. Rather than show a misleading "0", the dashboard shows "Not configured" when it can't stand behind a number, and each figure shows the share of your energy it's based on (its coverage). Low coverage means the figure represents only part of your network.

How the numbers are calculated

• CO₂ emitted uses the actual carbon intensity of the local grid, applied to the energy you delivered. In many countries Monta uses detailed hourly grid data for the specific grid region (bidding zone) from a third-party grid-data source, so a charge is measured against how clean the grid really was at the hour it happened. Where that live data isn’t available for a country, a country-level average is used as a fallback.
• CO₂ avoided is what an equivalent petrol/diesel car would have emitted over the same distance, minus what your charging actually emitted. So the cleaner the grid your drivers charge on, the more CO₂ is avoided. On an unusually dirty grid this figure can be small or even negative.
• Renewable share and average grid intensity are energy-weighted, so a network mixing cleaner and dirtier regions reflects the blend it actually delivered rather than a simple average.

Your Monta dashboard shows how much CO₂e your network's charging has avoided, how much CO₂e each kWh of electricity carried, and how much of it came from renewable sources. This article explains where each number comes from, so you can check our working — and understand what the figures do and don't claim.

How is CO₂e avoided calculated?

Every time a vehicle charges on your network, we compare two things: the emissions of the electricity actually used, and the emissions of the petrol or diesel that would have been burned covering the same distance. The difference is what was avoided.

CO₂e avoided  =  ( baseline × kWh charged )  −  CO₂e emitted
                        ↑                          ↑
                the combustion car          the electricity
                 that was not driven           that was used

The figures are measured on a lifecycle basis. That means the full chain (extracting, refining and transporting the fuel, and the equivalent upstream emissions for electricity), not only what leaves the exhaust or the chimney. It is also why the figures are CO₂e rather than CO₂: the lifecycle covers methane and nitrous oxide alongside carbon dioxide.

Only two inputs go into the calculation. The kWh figure is the energy delivered at the charging station, which is what the station meters rather than what reaches the battery. The vehicle efficiency figure is measured in the same place, so the two match.

What ICE baseline does Monta use?

The baseline is what a combustion car would have emitted over the distance an electric vehicle (EV) travels on one kWh. Monta uses 1,020 g CO₂e per kWh in Europe, and 1,266 g in the United States, Canada and the United Arab Emirates.

The higher figure applies where the vehicle being replaced is larger. Roughly two thirds of new vehicles sold in North America are sport utility vehicles and light trucks, and the fleet in the United Arab Emirates is similar. Almost the whole difference is vehicle size rather than fuel.

The European figure is built like this:

Four things are worth knowing about this figure.

• The comparison is against a real car, not a laboratory one. Official fuel consumption ratings are measured on a test cycle and are roughly a fifth better than what drivers achieve. Monta uses real-world measurements on both sides, so the comparison is like for like.
• The 1,020 g covers the whole fuel chain. That is extracting, refining and transporting the petrol or diesel. The electricity figures it is compared against include the equivalent upstream emissions, so the two sides are symmetrical.
• Manufacturing is excluded. Neither the car nor the battery is counted, on either side. Those emissions belong to buying a vehicle, not to a charge session.
• There is one European figure, not one per country. No institution publishes a combustion-only emission factor by country, because every national table counts electric cars at zero.

Where does grid intensity come from?

Grid intensity is how much CO₂e each kWh of electricity carries. Multiply it by the energy charged and you get the CO₂e that charge session emitted.

Monta does not calculate this figure itself. It comes from the two data providers below, which build it from national generation data and published emission factors for each generation type.

Grid intensity changes constantly. A windy night in Denmark can carry several times less CO₂e per kWh than a still evening. Where the data exists, Monta uses the intensity at the hour the charge session ran, in its bidding zone. That is what makes smart charging visible in the figures.

When the hourly figure isn't available for a session, the calculation falls back to the annual average for that zone. Where that happens, the CO₂e figure is a close approximation rather than an exact one: the annual average weights every hour of the year equally, so it fits best when charging is spread evenly across the year. It also won't reflect the specific hour the session ran, so smart charging will not show a benefit.

Each market uses one source for both grid intensity and renewable share, so the two figures always describe the same electricity.

What does the difference between the two sources mean for me?

Electricity Maps traces electricity across borders. Ember measures what a country generates. For most markets these are the same thing: a country that generates roughly what it consumes gets the same answer either way.

The difference matters where a country imports a large share of its electricity, because imports may be higher or lower in carbon intensity than domestic generation. In those markets an Ember-based figure describes the national generation mix rather than the mix flowing to your charging stations.

Among the markets on Ember, this affects four: Luxembourg, Malta, Croatia and Portugal.

Luxembourg is the clearest case. It generated 1.5 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity in 2025 but consumed 6.5 TWh, so roughly three quarters of the electricity used there is imported, almost entirely from Germany. Its renewable share of 91.6% describes what Luxembourg generates, not what a driver charging in Luxembourg receives.

The other nine Ember markets have no interconnectors, export more than they import, or are close to balanced, so the two approaches agree. Countries that export more than they keep, such as Sweden, France, Norway and Canada, consume their own mix, which makes the distinction irrelevant.

Why is smart charging shown separately?

CO₂e avoided and Smart-charging avoided are not meant to be added together.

CO₂e avoided covers every charge session, and answers what the charging would have emitted in a combustion car. Because it is calculated with the intensity of the hour a session ran, a session shifted into an hour with lower carbon intensity already shows lower emissions.

Smart-charging avoided covers shifted sessions only. Because a shifted session already shows lower emissions in the total, this figure tells you how much of that total came from the shifting.

This example shows the same 10 kWh charged in Denmark at two different hours:

Shifting the session improved the avoided figure by 1,500 g.

How is renewable share calculated?

Renewable share is the percentage of electricity from wind, solar, hydro, bioenergy and geothermal. It is taken from the same provider as your market's grid intensity, and it is energy-weighted across the bidding zones you delivered energy in.

Nuclear is not counted as renewable. That is standard practice, and it is the source of the most common misreading of this figure.

A low renewable share does not mean a high-carbon grid

Because nuclear is excluded, some of the lowest-carbon grids in Europe show modest renewable percentages:

France is the clearest example. It is 28% renewable, but 97% of its electricity comes from sources that emit almost no CO₂e, because most of it is nuclear. To judge the carbon intensity of your charging, look at grid intensity rather than renewable share.

Renewable is not the same as carbon-free

Bioenergy (burning wood, agricultural residues or waste) counts as renewable under EU law and in all standard accounting, so it is included here. But it does emit CO₂e when burned, so it is not treated as zero-carbon in our figures.

This matters most where bioenergy makes up a large share of generation: Réunion at 76%, Luxembourg at 27% and Denmark at 22%. In those markets a high renewable share does not translate into a low carbon intensity.

The same applies at the low-carbon end. Iceland runs almost entirely on hydro and geothermal and still carries around 28 g CO₂e per kWh, because building and maintaining power plants is not emissions-free.

The annual figure hides seasonal movement

Renewable shares are yearly averages. Individual months sit far above or below them, depending on wind, rain and sunshine. Nine markets swing by more than 25 percentage points between their lowest and highest month:

So a Belgian charge in a windy February draws from a very different grid than the same charge in a still August, even though the annual figure is one number.

What these figures are, and are not

• They are an estimate, carefully sourced. Every input comes from a named public source, and where a choice was available Monta took the conservative one.
• Avoided emissions are not a reduction in your carbon footprint. They describe emissions that did not happen because a combustion car was not driven. Under the Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol, avoided emissions are reported separately and cannot be subtracted from your own footprint.
• They are not a Scope 2 figure. Because we include the full fuel supply chain rather than power station combustion alone, these numbers do not match the Scope 2 definition used in CSRD and ESRS E1 reporting. If you need Scope 2 figures, ask us for your consumption by bidding zone and period and apply your own emission factors.
• No one has audited them. What Monta offers is a documented, conservative estimate with every source named.
• The counterfactual is a recent car. If the vehicle a driver replaced was older and thirstier, the real saving is larger than reported. If it was a hybrid, it is smaller.
• The United Arab Emirates uses the North American baseline. The 1,266 g figure is applied because the vehicle mix is closer to North America's, but it is a substitute rather than a measurement.
• Renewable share is not the figure reported under the Renewable Energy Directive. That one covers heating and transport as well as electricity, and gives much lower numbers. Nor is it supplier-specific: what a given charging station actually buys depends on its electricity contract and any guarantees of origin attached to it.
• The EV efficiency figure sits at the optimistic end of a defensible range. The 4.95 km/kWh comes from studies of 2021–2023 fleets, weighted towards home alternating current (AC) charging in mild weather. A network with more fast charging, colder sessions and heavier vehicles would see less. A more conservative figure would be between 4.65 and 4.95, and would produce a lower baseline and therefore lower avoided emissions.

Sources

Figures are for calendar year 2025, except Iceland and the United Arab Emirates (2024) and Réunion's grid intensity (2023), which are the most recent years published for those markets.

Good to know

• Where live hourly data exists, a charge reflects the grid intensity at the hour it happened; elsewhere a country-level figure is used. The dashboard’s network averages currently use a rolling grid-intensity figure, so a past period’s totals can shift slightly as that figure updates.
• The figures are designed to support insight and reporting; check them against your specific reporting requirements before any external submission.

Reading the numbers for reporting

Because these figures are meant to support CO₂ and renewable reporting, the dashboard is explicit about how solid each number is:

• Coverage, per number — each figure shows how much of your energy it is based on, split by the metric it applies to (combustion baseline, CO₂ measurement, and energy-source attribution) rather than one blended figure.
• How the CO₂ was measured — the CO₂ figure shows the share measured from detailed hourly grid data, from a grid-region (bidding-zone) average, and from a country constant. The more that comes from hourly data, the closer it is to a real measurement.
• Quality over time — data quality is shown per sub-period, so a dip during part of the period isn’t hidden by an average.
• Scope 2 basis: location-based — CO₂ emitted, grid intensity and renewable share are location-based (the grid average for your region at the time of charging). They are not a market-based claim: they reflect the grid you drew from, not energy you procured or guarantees of origin you hold.

CO₂ avoided is “project accounting”. Under the GHG Protocol, avoided emissions are disclosed separately from your Scope 1, 2 and 3 totals — they cannot be netted against them. Avoided emissions are also shared across the driver, the site owner, the energy supplier and Monta. Carry these caveats wherever you report the numbers.

CO₂ avoided vs Smart-charging avoided are two different things: CO₂ avoided is the benefit of the session not happening in a petrol/diesel car (all sessions); Smart-charging avoided is the extra benefit of shifting a charge into cleaner hours (only smart-charged sessions).

The dashboard shows its methodology version together with a changelog — each release lists what changed and, crucially, whether it moved figures that were already published. If it did, a number you reported in an earlier period may need revisiting.