MBERs
Marginal Build Emissions Rates (MBERs) for electricity
The Climate TRACE coalition has developed and maintains free global hourly Build Margin data, also known as MBERs, that are compliant with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol's Project Protocol electricity sector guidance, Guidelines for Grid-Connected Electricity Projects ("GHGP Guidelines").
This page contains the data and documentation. All data are free and provided without license restrictions. The methodology is open and can be reproduced by anyone, as detailed below.
What is a MBER?
MBER data are one form of marginal emissions data that measure the causal effect of an electricity sector action on emissions. They are expressed in kilograms of emissions reduced (or induced) per megawatt-hour of net electricity demand reduced (or induced) at a particular place and time. The action may therefore be anything that affects the quantity, time, or place of net electricity demand--whether that is consuming, conserving, generating, storing, load shaping, or transmitting electricity.
Specifically, MBERs estimate the change in emissions from how an action affects how much of which type of new power plants get built. When combined with MOER data, which estimate the change in emissions from how an action affects how existing power plants operate, the two can jointly produce an estimate of the total consequential effect of an action, aka the long-run marginal emissions rate. For more details, see the GHGP Guidelines or this related white paper from the ZEROgrid initiative.
Data download
MBERs data can be downloaded HERE. Both the latest data and archived versions are available, including Changelogs detailing data updates. The latest data include:
- Hourly MBERs for 265 grid regions starting from Jan 1, 2020. 52 of these extend through 2025, with the rest extending through 2024.
- Annual MBERs 6 grid regions for which hourly MBERs are not yet modeled.
Grid region information
Following the GHGP Guidelines, data are aggregated to the balancing authority level unless there are specific reasons to define a grid region differently. Note that most countries have exactly one balancing authority, while some have more--most notably the United States which has dozens. Finally, grid regions in the data downloads are represented by their 3-7 letter abbreviations, which can be mapped to descriptive names using this file.
[Note: This page contains a deprecated version (v2025-03-03) of MBERs. It is recommended to use the latest version following the information above.]
Methodology
These MBERs follow the default algorithm given in the GHGP Guidelines, at hourly granularity. Methodology and example calculations can be found here.
Model validation
Model validation can be found here.
Future work
Climate TRACE will continue to expand, maintain, and improve MBER data going forward. The next improvement scheduled is to expand the availability of hourly MBERs to all grids worldwide. All current and future updates to this dataset will be available at this page.
Contact
The annual and hourly MBERs data are created and maintained by the Climate TRACE coalition of nonprofits, universities, and tech companies. The largest contributors to the coalition's electricity sector work are WattTime, Transition Zero, Global Energy Monitor, Pixel Scientia Labs, Planet Labs, and Georgetown University. For questions or more information about MBER data, contact [email protected] or visit our contact page here.
