During the 2025 Sphera Scope 3 report, we found a significant increase in the number of companies reporting on Scope 3 emissions. 79% of companies now report on Scopes 1, 2 and 3, up from 52% in 2024, representing a 27-point year-over-year increase. Nearly 73% of businesses that don’t yet report on Scope 3 intend to do so soon.
If you’re one of those companies planning to start Scope 3 reporting soon or are already reporting and experiencing some challenges, Sphera has created a summer webinar series that can help.
Across this three-part series, Sphera experts will provide a practical roadmap that takes you from preparing your first Scope 3 inventory to iteratively improving accuracy over time. By the end, you should be ready to start building an informed decarbonization plan that meets your reporting requirements.
The first installment explores how to calculate an initial Scope 3 emissions inventory with spend-based data. We cover the limitations and opportunities of economic input-output data and share practical strategies for organizing data and selecting appropriate emissions factors.
With all that in place, we outline Sphera’s glide path to more detailed and action-oriented measurements that support continuous improvement.
If you missed the first one, here’s a brief look at what we covered. You can register here for the replay and sign up for the next one on July 30th.
Uncovering your biggest challenge (spoiler: it’s data)
We asked participants about their biggest roadblocks to getting started with Scope 3. An overwhelming 59% identified internal, complex data as their biggest issue. Only 19% cited regulatory complexity, 13% a lack of internal alignment and 6% budget. It’s no surprise, then, that the summer webinar series will focus on the best ways to identify, collect, manage, and report emissions data.
Understanding the scopes
For anyone just starting with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reporting, it’s important to understand the three scopes of reporting.
Scope 1 encompasses direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by your company, including company vehicles and facilities. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from purchased energy to run your business. Both sets of data are readily available from internal resources and relatively easy to interpret.
Scope 1 and 2 reporting is relatively straightforward. The data is often readily available within your organization. However, they only account for approximately 10% of your overall emissions.
Scope 3 is more complex and inherently more challenging to collect, aggregate and measure as it relates to 15 different categories that cover the entirety of your value chain.
Those categories go all the way upstream and then all the way downstream, including all purchased goods and services, capital goods, fuel and energy-related activities, transportation and distribution, waste, business travel, and employee commuting, as well as leased assets. When combined, Scope 3 can account for 80% to 90% of your emissions.
In the Sphera survey, 62% of respondents who report on Scope 3 cite internal data quality issues as a top challenge. Not surprising, given the broad scale they have to deal with.
Know your Scope 3 maturity stage
Where you are in your ability to accurately measure Scope 3 emissions depends on your maturity level and ability to work on Scope 3 emissions calculations. These stages include:
Novice
This stage comprises your first calculations in your initial years of Scope 3 reporting. It’s based on a screening study that roughly estimates your emissions, usually through spend-based data.
Efficient
Companies at this stage leverage corporate-level information, such as mass or country of origin, using industry-average emissions factors. It’s one step more accurate than spend-based data.
Optimized
This stage uses Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or Product Carbon Footprint (PCF) data, along with supplier-specific emissions factors, to link supplier performance with carbon savings tools.
Leader
The last step is to link the LCA or PCF data collected from suppliers to the procurement strategy. This allows you to identify suppliers that match and support your sustainability goals or drive change where and when needed. Once you reach this stage, it’s your signal to begin an ongoing continuous improvement process to stay out in front.
Start with spend-based data
Many sustainability experts start with spend-based data for Scope 3 reporting, which determines carbon emissions by the amount of money their companies spend on goods and services. This data is usually easily accessible within your organization and can provide context on emissions hotspots.
However, spend-based data can also be the least accurate way to measure your emissions. For example, the price of goods may increase, while the emissions associated with their production may remain the same or even decrease. There’s not always a strong relationship between spend hotspots and emissions hotspots. And the only way to lower your reported carbon emissions is to spend less or change what you buy.
Engage key stakeholders
After covering your challenges, your status and how spend-based data works, the webinar takes you through the steps of preparing for Scope 3 reporting.
The first thing to understand is that this is not a one-time activity. Scope 3 reporting is a multi-year, ongoing process that requires the buy-in and support of internal and external stakeholders.
It’s critical to identify the right internal supporters and external stakeholders and ensure they’re on board with the process. Both parties need to be engaged early and briefed on the process, covering why it’s important and the data you need. Also, be clear about how this Scope 3 output will fit into your larger ongoing strategy.
Internal data sources to leverage can include:
Accounting and finance for information around procurement and capital goods as well as leased assets or franchises, investments and utilities.
Sales can provide insight into procurement and the downstream side of your emissions; they often hold critical information regarding the end-of-life of sold products.
Logistics to identify transportation or distribution data.
Facilities for waste data, facility size and utility information.
Human resources for data and insights on employees and commuting.
Navigate the data landscape
When examining all these sources, you’ll discover that the data landscape is vast, varied and complex. It comes in a myriad of formats and units and might need to be collected at different cadences. It requires a great deal of focus to gather insights from such a diverse array of data.
Sphera recommends identifying these sources early, especially if you have operations developed through acquisitions that might have different processes or data stores.
Once you have all that information, you can begin defining your calculation methodology and finalizing a GHG inventory for your reporting software. The inventory document includes all assumptions, methodologies and calculations in an audit-ready template that can be directly used into reporting software.
Recap and what’s next
This first Scope 3 summer webinar teaches you how to lay the foundation of your emissions reporting, starting with spend data, leveraging advisory outputs and identifying strategic partners.
A spend-based methodology is widely considered the foundation or entry point into Scope 3 reporting. Be aware, though, that some areas of your Scope 3 reporting won’t progress much further beyond this.
More thorough and accurate reporting can be achieved with mass-based calculations, which we’ll go into greater detail on during our July 20th webinar: Utilizing mass-based data to identify hotspots and opportunities in your Scope 3 reporting.
