Addressing the Scope 3 Challenge - A workshop briefing from researchers working on corporate climate action and governance

Corporate net zero targets, and initiatives to validate those targets, are widely seen as playing a powerful role in conversations about the transition to net zero.  The Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) is the largest validator of corporate net-zero targets and is in the process of reviewing how to treat so-called ‘scope 3’ emissions – those that are not produced by a company directly but by ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ parts of its value chain. These emissions can be very significant, but businesses have – arguably – less control over them than over their own emissions.  

The Grantham Institute teamed up with Oxford Net Zero to convene a set of workshops bringing together academics and other experts to discuss issues related to the assessment and mitigation of scope 3 emissions. This briefing sets out the themes arising from workshop discussions on how standard setting bodies such as SBTi might approach scope 3. Areas it addresses include: 

• accounting methods and sector-based approaches in Scope 3;
• carbon credits and market-based approaches including a consideration of how to define ‘hard-to-abate’;
• whether standard setting organisations should recommend investment in permanent carbon removal and storage.

Several academics at Imperial College London have recently published papers on the topic of corporate action on science-based targets. See for example: 

• Corporate emissions targets and the neglect of future innovators
  
  
• Science-based targets miss the mark