Green Business Journal Publication

Companies can’t pretend that scope 3 is out of their control, says Dr Torill Bigg, Chief Carbon Reduction Engineer at Tunley Engineering.

A company’s scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions are sometimes misunderstood as simply being the scope 1 and 2 emissions from its suppliers.

This would merely be the carbon equivalent of fuel and energy use and could be considered to represent a double counting of carbon emissions. Sometimes, this reasoning is used to justify not measuring or reporting an organisation’s scope 3 emissions.

It has also sometimes been stated that if all companies report their scopes 1 and 2, there would be no need to report the ‘other indirect emissions’ that make up scope 3. However, there are 15 different emission sources included in scope 3, as defined by the greenhouse gas protocol corporate reporting standard. They can be the largest part of an organisation’s carbon footprint by far, and not all of them can justly be laid at the foot of the supply chain.

Let’s take a step back:

Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions from sources such as stationary combustion; for example furnaces, ovens and central heating plus direct mobile combustion such as in company cars or delivery vans.

Scope 2 emissions are indirect emissions from purchased energy sources, most commonly electricity bought in to operate lighting, IT, and machinery.

Although scope 3 will include suppliers’ scope 1 and 2 emissions, it also includes items that are very much emissions from the reporting organisation.

Some scope 3 emission sources can be a little harder to collate data for, but they make a sizeable contribution to a company’s greenhouse gas. Environmental responsibility demands sufficient commitment to their measurement, visibility and opportunities for reduction.