Decarbonisation: Italy among the first 10 countries to provide Scope3 data (customers and suppliers)

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The emissions generated by a company’s suppliers and its customers (Scope 3 of the GHG Protocol) are the most difficult element to evaluate for a company, even if on average the greenhouse gases generated by the supply chain are 11.4 times greater than direct emissions (Scope 1). So much so that, according to the latest report Scoping Out: Tracking Nature Across the Supply Chain of the Carbon Disclosure Project (Cdp), only four out of ten companies report this data. In a worrying climate, a positive note: Cdp tells Il Sole 24 Ore that Italy is among the top ten countries in the world for companies that provide information in at least one Scope 3 emissions category, together with France, Germany, the United States, China, Japan, United Kingdom and Brazil. And what are they 581 the companies that shared their data with Cdp, with significant growth over 2021 (there were 370).

The Cdp report shows that almost 70% of companies reported that they did not evaluate the impact of their supply chain on biodiversity, among the over 18,500 companies that communicated their data in 2022, over 7 thousand involved their suppliers on climate change compared to 915 on water and just over 500 on forests.

New platform for measuring the carbon footprint

In this context, Dexter Galvin global director, corporations & supply chains of Cdp, illustrates the CO2 AI Product Ecosystem platform (https://co2ai.com/), a new impact measurement tool developed with BSG which, from this year, is available free of charge to companies and will have a direct impact on the product: «The 280 companies already part of CDP’s Supply Chain program, which represent 6.4 trillion dollars in procurement costs, have started using it and which will share it with their own value chain will be over 8,600 suppliers involved».

«Up to now – added Galvin – we have focused on developing reporting capabilities at a company level, but today new technologies such as artificial intelligence are able to support a data analysis that goes into the detail of the product, which allows companies to look at the breakdown of product lifecycle carbon emissions and take action exactly where it is needed».

The director of Cdp gives an example: for years Pepsico has tried to reduce the emissions of the subsidiary Tropicana, without great success, and gradually analyzing packaging, logistics and transport. An Lca (Life Cycle Assessment) analysis of the product then showed that most of the emissions came from the fertilizers used by the suppliers and, once replaced, the company saw its emissions reduce by 50%..