Oracle Sustainability Concepts

Learn about the definitions that are key to performing various tasks in Oracle Fusion Cloud Sustainability.

• Activities and Activity Types
• Emission Factor Mappings
• Sustainability Ledgers
• Invoice Classification

Activities and Activity Types

• A sustainability activity is a record of an event, action, or purchase that has sustainability impact. The impact can be environmental, social, or related to corporate governance, or can relate to any other sustainability area specific to your business.

• An activity type is a way of classifying a sustainability activity. Examples of emission-generating activity types include Stationary Combustion, Mobile Combustion, and so on. Examples of activity types that do not generate emissions include Tree Planing, Charitable Giving, and so on.

  For each activity type, you can:

  • Have one or more activity type attributes, which are attributes specific to an activity type that capture data to help describe an activity of that type. For example, the Stationary Combustion activity type typically has a Fuel Type attribute.

  • Define one or more measure types. A measure type describes the quantitative data you want to capture on an activity record. Oracle provides three predefined measure types: Quantity, Distance, and Amount. You can define any additional measure types you need.

  • For an activity type that generates emissions, you must define one or more emission types. An emission type is a greenhouse gas or other pollutant (for example, an air pollutant) whose emissions you want to calculate or enter.

Emission Factor Mappings

• An emission factor mapping is a record that maps an activity type and a set of attribute values to an emission factor for a specific emission type. To calculate an activity’s emissions for a specific emission type, the emission calculator of Oracle Sustainability finds the emission factor mappings that match the activity and the emission type. Oracle Sustainability calculates greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by using emission factor mappings with the lowest rank number and Global Warming Potentials (GWPs).

• An emission factor mapping ranking is a number included in an emission factor mapping record. The ranking specifies the priority of the mapping when the emission calculator finds multiple matching emission factor mappings for the same emission type. A lower number specifies a higher priority.

Sustainability Ledgers

• A sustainability ledger is a source of truth in Oracle Sustainability for reporting. You define a sustainability ledger by providing a unique name for the ledger, a description, an accounting calendar, and a first period.

• The accounting calendar associated with the sustainability ledger is a calendar that’s defined in Oracle Fusion Financials Cloud. The first period assigned to the ledger indicates the period from which the ledger is operational.
• You can assign one or more legal entities to a sustainability ledger, but a legal entity can be assigned to only one sustainability ledger.
• Note: A sustainability ledger is not a financial ledger and has no relation to your financial accounting process.

Invoice Classification

If you process Payables Invoices in your Fusion environment, Oracle Sustainability lets you automatically generate activities and calculate emissions for each invoice distribution. This can be particularly useful for Scope 3 Category 1 (Purchased Goods and Services) activities. The following definitions are key to this task:

• An activity classification is a list of all valid combinations of activity type and activity type attributes for which emission factor mappings exist.
• An invoice classification rule is a rule that specifies an outcome activity classification provided a set of conditions are met. For example, a rule might specify that if the invoice line description contains the term Diesel and the supplier is Green Corp., then the activity classification should be Stationary Combustion.Diesel. There are two types of classification rules:
  • Exclusion Rule – Specifies that any invoice distribution that meets a specific set of conditions must be ignored and should not be considered for activity creation. These rules are executed first. Any invoice distributions that meet the conditions of any exclusion rule are ignored, and activities aren't generated from them.
  • Assignment Rule – Specifies that any invoice distribution that meets a specific set of conditions laid out in the rule must result in an activity that uses the activity classification specified on the rule. These assignment rules are evaluated in the order of ranking from the highest to the lowest rank. A lower number specifies a higher priority. If an invoice distribution doesn't meet the criteria of any assignment rules, an activity is created with a default activity type that you specify in the profile options for Oracle Sustainability.