Companies Can Improve Sustainability by Finding Carbon Emissions Hot Spots Across Their Supply Chains, Accenture Report Shows

Companies need full visibility across their supplier base in order to make significant progress on net zero targets by 2050. However, that visibility is challenged by the fact that nearly two-thirds of upstream Scope 3^[1] emissions in supply chains come from suppliers that companies don’t deal with directly, according to a new report by Accenture (NYSE: ACN).

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Companies need full visibility across their supplier base in order to make significant progress on net zero targets by 2050, says Accenture. (Graphic: Business Wire)

The Thought you knew the Scope 3 issues in your supply chain? Think again. report examines carbon intensive “hot spots” in supply chains across supplier tiers, identifying where greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are significantly higher and potentially more difficult to reduce. For the report, Accenture developed a data model that uses industry- and country-level trade and emissions data to calculate the Scope 3 contribution of suppliers to their customers and create an accurate picture of the location and size of upstream GHG emissions.

“Scope 3 emissions are elusive and difficult to track in today’s complex supply chains. Many large companies don’t even know the suppliers beyond Tier 1, let alone have any sort of influence or control over them or their sustainability practices, which is why we have seen little progress in reductions to date,” said Kris Timmermans, Accenture’s Supply Chain lead. “Armed with the knowledge of where their emissions sit, companies can do the really important thing – commit to taking action and collaboration with the entire supplier base and all stakeholders, toward a more sustainable future.”

The model Accenture created can show upstream emissions by country, industry and supplier tier – for example in German automaking revealing beyond the known suppliers in Germany and China to those buried deeper in supply networks from other countries like Poland and South Africa. The model also compares upstream Scope 3 emissions with Scope 1, finding wide variation across industries — for example, the high tech industry’s upstream Scope 3 emissions are 28 times as large as its Scope 1 emissions, compared with the utilities sector, where upstream Scope 3 is only one-fifth the size of its Scope 1 emissions.