Emissions scopes: A refresher

Corporate emissions fall into three categories: Scopes 1, 2, and 3.

Scope 1 covers emissions from sources that an organisation directly owns or controls.

Scope 2 refers to emissions from purchased electricity, steam, heating, and cooling that the reporting company consumes over the course of their operations.

Scope 3 is everything else – all other indirect emissions that occur within an organisation’s value chain, both up- and downstream.

Given value chain emissions make up 80% of total emissions for a typical consumer company, we cannot tackle our total emissions without addressing the Scope 3 challenge. Consequently, we cannot meaningfully improve carbon performance without working in collaboration with key supplier stakeholders.

Meaningful supplier relationships are no longer a nice to have, they are business critical.