5 Practical Strategies to Tackle the Scope 3 Emissions Challenge

Take the first step today: map your value chain, break Scope 3 into clear categories, and assign ownership across the supplier group. This provides a concrete baseline for compliance and a practical route to carbon reduction at scale.

Strategy 1: Establish a repeatable data collection method and embed emissions disclosures in supplier contracts. Build a lightweight dashboard that flags data gaps, tracks progress, and highlights high-risk segments. This method ensures data quality and is designed for ensuring timely reporting and helps teams stay compliant across tiers.

Strategy 2: Create supplier groups by category to share data, align expectations, and drive joint reduction efforts. A group-based approach reduces duplication and accelerates progress by enabling cross-unit learning and coordinated action across the chain.

Strategy 3: Embed sustainable procurement into the sourcing process. Prioritize contracts with lower-carbon suppliers, set category-level targets, and link a portion of incentives to sustained reduction in Scope 3 emissions. This approach addresses hotspots and builds durable progress across the supply base.

Strategy 4: Establish interim milestones and a clear reporting cadence. This requires cross-functional alignment to be effective. Use pragmatic metrics, such as the share of spend with low-carbon suppliers and year-over-year progress toward category targets, to keep teams focused on addressing carbon across the chain.

Strategy 5: Promote transparency through third-party verification and regular reporting. Provide a trusted view of progress, reinforce compliance, and cultivate stakeholder confidence while enabling contractual leverage to sustain momentum.

Define Scope 3 boundaries and materiality for your value chain

Map your entire value chain into Scope 3 categories and establish materiality by carbon hotspots and data reliability to guide where to focus investments.

Identify upstream and downstream activities across your networks: purchased goods and services, capital goods, fuel- and energy-related activities, transportation and distribution, waste, business travel, employee commuting, use of sold products, end-of-life treatment, and investments. Implement engagements with suppliers and networks to improve data quality and coverage.

Adopt a data-driven approach to determine materiality: attach GHG factors to each category, align with market standards, and use group data where company data is missing. Create a simple materiality matrix that focuses on the intersection of impact and likelihood to guide action across the most influential categories.

Address challenges like data gaps and supplier coverage by setting times to collect data and run quarterly updates. Use practical enablement tools to accelerate data collection and improve the reliability of the data.

These steps enable enabling actions that drive improvement and enhance sustainable, data-driven practices across the entire group. Set clear standards for reporting, align investments with hotspots, and build feedback loops to sharpen engagements with the market and sustain action.

Collect and validate supplier emission data

Adopt a centralized supplier emission data platform to collect and validate data directly from suppliers, with a seamless onboarding flow and scalable fields aligned to your reporting framework. Set a near-term milestone to obtain complete data for top-tier suppliers and market-relevant product categories, and outline a plan for ongoing data quality addressing risk and governance.

• Define a minimal data template that captures: supplier_id, supplier_name, geography, product_category, unit, year, activity_data (kg CO2e), emission_source (Scope 3), data_source, methodology, data_quality_flags. This keeps where data quality is measurable and tracking is straightforward.
• Engage suppliers through a dedicated portal that motivates timely submissions, with clear value propositions, automated reminders, and a concise onboarding guide to maintain near-term data availability.
• Apply automated validation: perform unit conversions to a common unit, run consistency checks against activity data and procurement records, and flag missing values or outliers to support decisive data quality improvements and seamless reporting.
• Address data gaps with risk-based follow-ups: categorize suppliers by data completeness and emission intensity, assign owners, and set fixed timelines for updates to reduce near-term risk exposure.
• Complement internal records with external checks where appropriate, while clearly documenting data provenance and confidence levels to improve representativeness across regions and markets.
• Represent insights to leadership and procurement teams via dashboards that track coverage, completeness, and trend lines, enabling market-facing visibility and cross-functional collaboration.
• Tracking and measurement cadence: establish monthly data refreshes for top suppliers, quarterly updates for others, and an annual validation cycle to inform planning and initiative-level actions across the market.
• Governance and controls: define access rights, keep audit trails, and uphold privacy safeguards while outlining data flows, quality rules, and escalation paths for addressing issues quickly.

This approach gives you a scalable foundation to engage suppliers, motivate improvements, and address risk over the coming quarters, supporting planning, measurement, and initiative-level progress across the market.

Build supplier engagement programs with clear incentives and training

Start with a transparent incentive framework that rewards verified emission reductions and accurate reporting. Tie supplier payments and contract terms to measurable actions, such as switching to lower-emission energy, upgrading equipment, or delivering data-driven reports from sites across the chains. Set near-term targets and align quarterly milestones with renewals and phased investments in supplier capabilities. Establishing a culture of collaboration with suppliers, and recognizing their progress in dashboards visible to both sides, keeps relationships strong and accountable.

Map the supplier network and identify where the biggest changes can occur across supply chains. Start with the top emitters and establish a baseline using a data-driven approach. They need clear guidance for the employee team at each site to report consistently and to implement your guidelines on site. Collaboration across procurement, sustainability, and operations accelerates changes on a near-term cadence and builds trust across relationships.

Incentive design and governance

Design a tiered incentive scheme that ties rewards to verifiable actions: for example, a 1–2% price adjustment in the next contract cycle for a 5% reduction, increasing with higher reductions. Offer recognition as preferred partner status and access to co-investments for efficiency upgrades. Use quarterly reviews to update targets and reflect the changing risk profile, and establish a joint scorecard that is shared with suppliers to improve accountability across the programme. Establishing governance with procurement leads, sustainability teams, and finance helps them face questions quickly and adjust plans.

Training and capability building

Develop modular training for supplier teams that covers GHG accounting basics, data submission templates, and practical energy-saving actions. Create role-specific modules for plant managers, procurement leads, and finance staff, plus hands-on labs and case studies on validating data, establishing baselines, and reporting changes through the programme. Provide a dedicated contact and quarterly office hours to support them, and invest in on-site coaching when needed. This investment in capabilities helps them face new requirements and adapt quickly across chains.

Track progress with a simple, data-driven scorecard and quarterly dashboards; celebrate improvements; adjust incentives to reflect changes in supplier performance; maintain a steady cadence to avoid abrupt changes. With collaboration across chains and clear investments in skills, the programme grows stronger and reduces emission risk across the near-term horizon.

Develop actionable mitigation roadmaps and set science-based targets

Launch a cross-functional programme to develop a practical mitigation roadmap and set science-based targets. This initiative acts as a catalyst by tying footprinting data to purchasing decisions and supplier engagement, creating visible, trackable progress across the wider value chain.

Define a standard, scalable processes for data collection and supplier footprinting, aligned with GHG Protocol and SBTi guidance. Prioritize high-emission categories (purchasing, logistics, and manufacturing) and attach measurable milestones to each supplier cluster; design the plan to replicate across regions and product lines, supported by clear standards.

Set a phased target framework with a baseline and milestones for 2030 and 2035. The average pace depends on supplier collaboration; start with a 2–4% year-over-year reduction and accelerate as data quality improves and preferential terms with key suppliers unlock lower-carbon solutions. Dashboards will show trend lines and milestone attainment, and progress can be benchmarked against industry peers.

Establish governance with regular decision-making sessions at corporate level to review footprinting results, approve supplier development plans, and reallocate resources. Build a data backbone that standardizes reporting, verification, and progress updates to support transparency and accountability, and ensure executive sponsorship from the outset.

Turn insights into action through an engagement-driven approach: launch a supplier-facing programme to collect data, identify hotspots, and co-create improvements. Use these engagements to guide purchasing decisions toward lower-emission options and to accelerate product and process changes that reduce emissions across the value chain.

Monitor progress, report transparently, and drive continuous improvement

Begin with a centralized dashboard that automates ingestion of supplier data and product emissions, providing a seamless view of progress through monthly checks and quarterly reviews. Set a concrete target, for example a 15% reduction in Scope 3 emissions within 12 months, and align measures with supplier feedback to adjust strategies in real time.

Prioritise contracts and collaboration to influence supplier behavior; require shared data, provide feedback, and align incentives with decarbonization milestones. Create decisive relationships with key suppliers to accelerate change, and ensure strategies are visible in a market-wide context that supports business-wide decarbonization efforts.

Define a simple step to move data collection, validation, reporting, and action in sequence to avoid gaps.

Establish a stepwise governance loop that assigns clear owners, tracks effectiveness, and creates feedback-driven iteration. From data collection to action, the process should be traceable and openly shared with internal teams and critical suppliers alike.

Data governance and stakeholder engagement

Assign cross-functional ownership for ingestion quality, data timeliness, and contract updates. Build relationships with suppliers to enable direct collaboration through a shared, secure portal. Provide concise dashboards that translate complex data into actionable insights, empowering teams to influence decisions directly and prioritise the most impactful decarbonization projects.

Progress metrics and accountability