Emission Factors MCP server

emission-factors MCP server

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Give Claude, Cursor, Cline, or any MCP client live access to US electricity data by ZIP code - grid-carbon emission factors, retail rates, hourly grid carbon intensity, power-plant emissions, and utility tariffs.

Backed by emission-factors.com, which wraps EPA eGRID, EIA-861, EIA-930, EPA CAMD, and OpenEI URDB into one ZIP-keyed API.

Free. No API key, no signup. The API is rate-limited per IP (2,000 requests/hour).

What you can ask

Once connected, your agent can answer things like:

• "My HQ in ZIP 94105 uses 1.2M kWh/year. What's our Scope 2 carbon footprint and annual electricity cost?"
• "Compare Denver, Austin, and Columbus for a new data center on grid carbon intensity and electricity price."
• "What hour of the day is cleanest to run a 500 kW batch job in California this week?"
• "Enrich this list of 40 store ZIP codes with each site's emission factor and carbon-free percentage."
• "Which are the dirtiest power plants in Texas by CO2 over the last week?"
• "Rank Ashburn VA, Abilene TX and The Dalles OR for a 10 MW data center on carbon and power cost."
• "Our plant burns 40,000 therms of gas and 3,000 gallons of diesel a year - what's our Scope 1?"
• "What's the actual PG&E residential tariff for 94105, not the state average?"

Why use it

• Scope 2 carbon accounting - GHG Protocol location- and market-based emission factors for 33,700+ US ZIP codes (CDP, CSRD, California SB 253 inputs).
• Site selection - compare candidate locations on both carbon intensity and electricity cost in one conversation.
• Demand-response and load-shifting analysis - hourly grid carbon from EIA-930 (fixed per-fuel factors on in-BA generation: for timing, not inventory reporting).
• Plant-level emissions - EPA CAMD data for fossil units over 25 MW: per-facility summaries or unit-hour records, published quarterly.
• Agents and automation - a clean tool surface so an LLM can fetch authoritative government data instead of hallucinating factors.

Quick start

There are two ways to run this. Most people want Option A.

Option A - Remote server (recommended, zero install)

Nothing to install, always up to date. The hosted endpoint is https://emission-factors.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key).

Claude (web, desktop app, mobile) - Add to Claude. The link opens Claude's custom-connector dialog with the name and URL filled in; select Add, then Connect. By hand: Customize -> Connectors -> Add custom connector, URL https://emission-factors.com/mcp, OAuth fields empty.

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport http emission-factors https://emission-factors.com/mcp

Cursor - add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "emission-factors": {
      "url": "https://emission-factors.com/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Cline / Continue / Zed / other clients - add a remote (Streamable HTTP) MCP server with URL https://emission-factors.com/mcp. No key needed.

Claude Desktop's claudedesktopconfig.json only starts local (stdio) servers - a "url" entry there does nothing. Use the connector link above, or Option B.

Option B - Local stdio server (this package)

Runs the server as a local process that proxies the same public API. Useful for clients that only support stdio transport, or if you want to self-host.

Run straight from GitHub (builds on install, requires Node 18+):

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.