Open-source Scope 1-3 carbon accounting pipeline for German industrial SMEs.

Open-Source Scope 1-3 Carbon-Accounting-Pipeline fuer deutsche Industrie-KMU.

German industrial SMEs face mandatory CSRD Scope 1-3 reporting from 2026-2027, but existing solutions require expensive SaaS subscriptions or cloud vendor lock-in. ChemTrace parses energy invoices (electricity, natural gas, diesel) from PDF files, calculates CO2e emissions using configurable factors, indexes the data in a local vector store, and answers natural language questions about consumption and emissions — all running entirely on your own machine. It also parses SAP CSV energy exports with automatic encoding, delimiter, and number format detection. It can export energy and emissions data to the EFRAG VSME Digital Template for CSRD compliance.

Key features: zero cloud dependencies, zero API keys, audit-ready emission traceability, bilingual CLI, Docker deployment in under 30 minutes.

SAP CSV specifics: → Encoding: cp1252 (default), UTF-8, UTF-8 with BOM → Delimiter: semicolon (default), comma, tab → Number format: German (1.234,56) and English (1,234.56) → Headers: optional (column inference for headerless files) → Period formats: 2024-01, 01.2024, 202401, Jan 2024, P01/2024

First build downloads torch + sentence-transformers (~2.5 GB image, 5-10 min). First model pull downloads llama3.2:3b (~2 GB, 3-5 min). Subsequent runs use cache.

Step 1: Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/sdamianiw/chemtrace.git
cd chemtrace

Step 2: Start Ollama and wait for it to be healthy

docker compose up -d ollama
docker compose ps    # wait until ollama shows "healthy"

Step 3: Parse the sample invoices

docker compose run --rm chemtrace parse

Expected output: 5 invoices parsed, CSV written to ./output/.

# Parse SAP CSV energy exports
docker compose run --rm -e CHEMTRACE_INPUT_DIR=./data/sample_sap chemtrace parse

Step 4: Ask a question

docker compose run --rm chemtrace ask "What was electricity consumption in Jan 2024?"

Step 5: Shut down

docker compose down

ChromaDB data and Ollama models are preserved in Docker named volumes between runs.

Prerequisites: Python 3.11+, Ollama installed and running.

Install dependencies

pip install -r requirements.txt

Pull the default model

ollama pull llama3.2:3b

Parse invoices

PYTHONPATH=src python -m chemtrace parse --input-dir data/sample_invoices/

# For SAP CSV files, set the input directory:
CHEMTRACE_INPUT_DIR=data/sample_sap PYTHONPATH=src python -m chemtrace parse

Ask a question

PYTHONPATH=src python -m chemtrace ask "What was electricity consumption in Jan 2024?"

Other commands

PYTHONPATH=src python -m chemtrace status          # show indexed document count
PYTHONPATH=src python -m chemtrace export output/  # export data as CSV

ChemTrace can export energy and emissions data to the official EFRAG VSME Digital Template (v1.2.0). This fills Disclosure B3 (Energy and GHG Emissions) for CSRD/VSME compliance reporting.

Docker:

docker compose run --rm chemtrace export --format vsme --output output/vsme_report.xlsx
docker compose run --rm chemtrace export --format vsme --output output/vsme_report.xlsx --turnover 5000000

Local:

PYTHONPATH=src python -m chemtrace export --format vsme --output vsme_report.xlsx --turnover 5000000

The exported XLSX can be uploaded to EFRAG's online XBRL converter for machine-readable reporting.

Erster Build laedt torch + sentence-transformers (~2,5 GB Image, 5-10 Min.). Erster Modell-Download: llama3.2:3b (~2 GB, 3-5 Min.). Folgelaeufe nutzen den Cache.

Schritt 1: Repository klonen

git clone https://github.com/sdamianiw/chemtrace.git
cd chemtrace

Schritt 2: Ollama starten und auf Betriebsbereitschaft warten

docker compose up -d ollama
docker compose ps    # warten bis ollama "healthy" anzeigt

Schritt 3: Musterrechnungen verarbeiten

docker compose run --rm chemtrace parse

Ergebnis: 5 Rechnungen verarbeitet, CSV-Ausgabe in ./output/.

# SAP CSV Energiedaten parsen
docker compose run --rm -e CHEMTRACE_INPUT_DIR=./data/sample_sap chemtrace parse

Schritt 4: Frage stellen

docker compose run --rm chemtrace ask "What was electricity consumption in Jan 2024?"

Schritt 5: Herunterfahren

docker compose down

ChromaDB-Daten und Ollama-Modelle bleiben in Docker-Volumes zwischen den Laeufen erhalten.

ChemTrace kann Energie- und Emissionsdaten in das offizielle EFRAG VSME Digital Template (v1.2.0) exportieren. Dies fuellt Angabe B3 (Energie und THG-Emissionen) fuer die CSRD/VSME-Berichterstattung.

docker compose run --rm chemtrace export --format vsme --output output/vsme_report.xlsx
docker compose run --rm chemtrace export --format vsme --output output/vsme_report.xlsx --turnover 5000000

Die exportierte XLSX-Datei kann ueber den EFRAG XBRL-Konverter in maschinenlesbare Berichte umgewandelt werden.

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    USER INTERFACE                        │
│                                                         │
│   CLI: chemtrace parse | ask | status | export          │
│                                                         │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│                                                         │
│   ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐   ┌───────────────────┐  │
│   │          │   │          │   │                   │  │
│   │ PDF/CSV  │──→│ ETL      │──→│ Vector Store      │  │
│   │ Parsers  │   │ Pipeline │   │ (ChromaDB)        │  │
│   │          │   │          │   │                   │  │
│   └──────────┘   └──────────┘   └────────┬──────────┘  │
│                                          │              │
│                                          ▼              │
│                                 ┌───────────────────┐   │
│                                 │                   │   │
│                                 │ RAG Client        │   │
│                                 │ (Ollama LLM)      │   │
│                                 │                   │   │
│                                 └───────────────────┘   │
│                                                         │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│  Config (.env) │ Emission Factors │ Error Logger        │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Data flow:

PDF files (data/sample_invoices/)
    │
    ▼
pdf_parser.py ──→ ParseResult
                      │
CSV files (data/sample_sap/)      │
    │                              ▼
    ▼                          etl.py
sap_parser.py ──→ ParseResult ──→ (validate → enrich → store)
                                   │
                                   ├──→ CSV export (output/)
                                   ├──→ ChromaDB index
                                   └──→ errors.csv

User question (CLI)
    │
    ▼
rag_client.py ──→ ChromaDB retrieval → Ollama completion → formatted answer

Copy .env.example to .env and edit as needed. Docker Compose reads .env automatically.

Emission factors are stored in data/emission_factors/factors.json with source citations. Every CO2e calculation is fully traceable: energy_amount × factor = emissions_tco2.

To add a new energy type: add one entry to factors.json — no code changes required.

To switch models: set OLLAMA_MODEL=llama3.1:8b in your .env file.

Windows (WSL2) users: Docker runs inside WSL2. Create or edit ~/.wslconfig to ensure sufficient memory:

[wsl2]
memory=4GB

After editing, run wsl --shutdown and restart Docker Desktop. With memory=2GB or less, Ollama cannot load the model and will fail with HTTP 500.

ChemTrace is an early-stage OSS project. Contributions are welcome.

→ Open an issue to discuss a bug or feature before submitting a PR. → Follow the existing code style (type hints, docstrings, no hardcoded values). → All PRs must pass pytest tests/ (73 unit tests + 2 integration tests). → New parsers: add regex patterns to src/chemtrace/parser_patterns.py. → New emission factors: add entries to data/emission_factors/factors.json with source citation.

MIT License. See LICENSE for full text. Copyright (c) 2026 Sebastian Damiani Wolf.