Scope 3 Emissions

ESG

All indirect emissions in a company's value chain — both upstream and downstream.

Sources

1. GHG Protocol — A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (revised edition), WRI & WBCSD ghgprotocol.org accessed 23 September 2026

The standard puts it this way: “Scope 3 is an optional reporting category that allows for the treatment of all other indirect emissions. Scope 3 emissions are a consequence of the activities of the company, but occur from sources not owned or controlled by the company.” Two things worth keeping: it is optional in the Corporate Standard itself — later guidance and some regulations treat it as expected — and it is the category that reaches an exporter, because a buyer’s scope 3 includes its suppliers’ emissions.

Quoted from the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, published by the World Resources Institute and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Later GHG Protocol guidance refines scope 2 (location- and market-based methods) and scope 3 (fifteen categories); those documents are not quoted here.

Related terms

• Carbon Footprint
• Circular Economy
• CSDDD
• Environmental Social Governance
• Fair Trade Certification
• GOTS Certification

From the AJG lexicon archive (July 2026).