Tackling Scope 3 emissions: a practical guide for supply chains
For most companies in southern Africa, the majority of emissions sit outside their fence line. The work is finding them, ranking them, and getting suppliers to answer.
By Terra Verde
Scope 3 is where climate strategies go to die. It is also where most of the emissions are.
For a mining operation, purchased goods and services, transport and downstream processing typically dwarf on-site fuel and electricity. For an agricultural processor, land-use change and upstream inputs dominate. A company that reports only Scope 1 and 2 is reporting a minority of its exposure.
Start with screening, not precision
You cannot collect primary data from every supplier in the first quarter, and you should not try. A spend-based screening across the fifteen categories gives you a ranking: which categories are large, which are immaterial, and where primary data will change the answer.
Label the output honestly as an estimate. Precision claims that later collapse do more damage than an acknowledged range.
Prioritise by influence, not only by size
A category can be large and immovable — purchased commodities priced by a global market. Another can be smaller but directly addressable through specification or contract terms.
The useful matrix is size against your ability to change the outcome. That is where engagement effort should go.
Supplier engagement that produces data
Most suppliers in the region have never been asked for an emissions figure. A request with no explanation gets ignored. What works:
- A one-page data request with the specific activity figures you need, not an open question.
- A calculation method you supply, so the supplier does not have to invent one.
- A named contact and a deadline tied to your own reporting cycle.
- Feedback on the result, so the supplier sees why it mattered.
Improve data quality deliberately
Emissions factors matter. Regional grid factors, local fuel specifications and African land-use assumptions differ from the European defaults embedded in many tools. Using a default is acceptable; using one without disclosure of the assumption is not.
Report the trajectory, not just the total
Buyers, lenders and customers increasingly ask what changed and why, not only what the number was. A Scope 3 inventory that is rebuilt from scratch each year cannot answer that. A stable methodology with documented improvements can.
Scope 3 is a multi-year programme. The companies that make progress are the ones that start with a labelled estimate and improve it every cycle, rather than waiting for perfect data that never arrives.