Roadmap Tool: Overview and methodology

This article explains how the Roadmap Tool works and how to interpret its results with confidence. It covers the methodology behind projections, pathway aggregation, and intensity calculations — so you can verify numbers, explain them to stakeholders, and trust them for decision-making.

This is one of three articles covering the Roadmap Tool:

The Roadmap Tool models your portfolio's expected energy and emissions performance from your most recent data year through 2050, and compares that trajectory against decarbonisation pathways such as CRREM.

It connects three things into a single view:

The result is a projected trajectory you can use to assess transition risk, plan capital allocation, and communicate progress.

Note The Roadmap Tool is for strategic planning and scenario modelling — not for compliance reporting or audited financial data. Financial outputs are scenario-based estimates. See Scenario-based estimates vs accounting costs below.

Scaler anchors all forward-looking projections to a single baseline: the Last reporting year defined in your portfolio settings.

This is the most recent year of complete energy and emissions data that Scaler uses as the starting point. From this year, projections carry performance forward based on the inputs described below.

Why this matters: If your portfolio is mid-way through a reporting year — for example, you are entering 2026 consumption data but the year is not yet complete — including that partial year as the baseline would skew all projections forward. The Last reporting year field exists to prevent this. Set it to the most recent year for which you have complete data.

Warning The Last reporting year field does not update automatically. It must be adjusted manually each year as data collection completes.

Configuring the baseline year

There are two ways to set the baseline year, with different scopes:

Data Collection Portal → Portfolio → Settings → Last reporting year — sets the default baseline for the entire portfolio, used across all analytics. Applies to all users.

Analytics Portal → Roadmap Analysis → View dropdown (top right) → Pathways baseline year — overrides the baseline for your own Roadmap view only. This does not affect portfolio settings or other users. The override persists while you are logged in, and resets to the portfolio default when you log out.

Energy Use Intensity (EUI) projections are affected by two things only:

The projection carries the baseline EUI forward and adjusts it when measures take effect or the portfolio composition changes. There is no smoothing or trend fitting across historical years — the projection starts from one data point: the baseline year.

Tip If your most recent year of data shows unusually high or low consumption due to exceptional circumstances, adjust the Pathways baseline year in the View dropdown to use an earlier, more representative year as the starting point.

Carbon Use Intensity (CUI) projections follow the same logic as EUI, with one addition:

This means that even without any planned measures, a portfolio's projected CUI will typically decline over time as the grid becomes cleaner. The rate of this decline depends on the country-specific CRREM assumptions for each asset.

Portfolio EUI is a floor-area-weighted average of asset-level EUI values. It is not a simple average.

The formula is:

Portfolio EUI = SUM(asset EUI × asset active floor area) / SUM(asset active floor areas)

This is mathematically equivalent to total portfolio consumption divided by total active floor area. It means assets with larger active floor areas have proportionally more influence on the portfolio figure.

Assets with missing data for a given year are excluded from that year's calculation rather than treated as zero.

Note Scaler does not currently display the total active floor area figure used in this calculation directly in the interface. If you are manually verifying the portfolio EUI from asset-level data, use active floor area (not GFA) as the weight.

Active floor area is the portion of an asset's floor area that is actively metered and included in Scaler's calculations. It is not the same as GFA, and it is not derived from vacancy rate.

Each asset is divided into area types: Whole Building, Tenant Areas, Common Areas, and Landlord Areas. For each area type, Scaler sums the floor area covered by meters that are set to Active and toggled to be included in calculations. This total is then capped at the floor area of the relevant area type.

Active floor area is used as the denominator in all intensity calculations (kWh/m², kgCO₂e/m²). This ensures intensity reflects actual operational performance across metered space, not the total building footprint.

Warning If meters are incorrectly set to inactive or excluded from calculations, active floor area will be smaller than expected and intensity values will appear artificially high. If your intensity figures look unexpectedly elevated, check that all relevant meters are set to Active and included in calculations.

For full detail on meters and active area configuration, see: Meters & consumption in Scaler: overview

CRREM publishes decarbonisation pathways per country and property type — not at portfolio level. To give you a portfolio-level reference line, Scaler constructs an aggregate portfolio pathway by combining the individual asset-level CRREM pathways in your portfolio, weighted by each asset's floor area.

The result is a single blended pathway that reflects your portfolio's actual composition by country, climate zone, and property type. If your portfolio is 60% German offices and 40% Dutch retail, the aggregate pathway reflects that mix.

Important The aggregate portfolio pathway is calculated for the full portfolio composition and does not change when you apply filters. If you filter to show only German assets, the projected trend line updates to reflect only those assets — but the pathway reference line remains based on the full portfolio.

This is intentional. CRREM does not publish portfolio-level pathways, and the aggregate line is constructed for the specific portfolio it represents. Applying filters to the pathway would create a different blended line that no longer corresponds to a defined CRREM benchmark.

CRREM pathways are formally defined using Gross Internal Area (GIA), which represents usable internal floor area. However, GIA data is often unavailable or inconsistently reported across portfolios.

Scaler uses Gross Floor Area (GFA) for CRREM-related calculations because GFA is more widely available, is the standard used in GRESB and other ESG reporting frameworks, and applying it consistently across all assets improves comparability.

Using GFA instead of GIA may result in slightly different absolute intensity values, but it does not change the underlying trajectory or interpretation of pathway alignment when applied consistently.

By default, Scaler uses reported consumption values as entered — no adjustment is applied for vacancy or occupancy.

An occupancy-based normalisation option is available in the View dropdown (Analytics Portal → Roadmap Analysis → View → Occupancy-based normalisation). When selected, Scaler adjusts consumption to reflect 100% occupancy, using the Annual vacancy rate field entered at the asset level.

The adjustment is:

Adjusted consumption = Reported consumption / (1 − vacancy rate)

This is aligned with GRESB methodology and is intended to remove vacancy effects from intensity comparisons — so a building does not appear efficient simply because it was partially empty.

Note Occupancy normalisation is optional because not all clients follow CRREM or GRESB methodology, and some prefer to work with consumption as reported. The default view (no normalisation) reflects actual metered data. If you are benchmarking against CRREM pathways, applying occupancy-based normalisation is consistent with how CRREM expects performance to be assessed.

Additional normalisation options available in the same dropdown: time-based normalisation and a combined time + occupancy-based normalisation.

The financial outputs in the Roadmap Tool — transition risk exposure, cost exposure from emissions misalignment, cumulative CapEx — are scenario-based estimates for strategic planning purposes.

These are not accounting costs, regulatory compliance figures, or audited financial data. They are decision-support tools: useful for investment committee discussions, capital allocation prioritisation, and communicating transition risk to stakeholders, but not suitable for statutory financial reporting.

Always clarify this distinction when presenting roadmap financial data to finance teams or external auditors.