Creating internal momentum is essential for driving aligned climate actions that lead to meaningful reductions. Corporate climate teams can:
- Secure senior leadership buy-in by highlighting climate initiatives as a clear business opportunity.
- Help shape an effective internal climate governance structure, often benefiting from a decentralized and distributed approach.
- Sustain momentum by progressively embedding climate KPIs, creating internal incentives, and integrating carbon pricing into business decision-making.
When addressing Scope 3 emissions transparency, corporate climate teams can:
- Set clear reporting goals (e.g., disclosure or reduction) and develop a methodology selection decision tree (or use the proposed one) to navigate complex requirements.
- Manage GHG data uncertainties by leveraging industry-specific sources to understand typical emissions ranges. When evaluating green products, verify scope boundaries, certification schemes, recycled content, and additionality to minimize greenwashing risks.
Moving beyond transparency for effective supply chain emissions reduction, corporate and procurement teams can:
- Incorporate material-specific indicators into existing supplier segmentation frameworks to accurately identify suppliers by climate impact and maturity.
- Tailor engagement strategies for different supplier groups, focusing on achieving reduction outcomes with innovation suppliers and building capacity with intervention suppliers.
- Prioritize financial incentives for suppliers with high climate impact and maturity, while organizing abatement levers across various supplier segments.
- Track climate progress using sector-specific metrics aligned with supplier maturity to capture actual emissions from major sources.
When exploring lower-carbon procurement options to concretely support decarbonization, procurement teams can work with corporate climate teams to:
- Understand green products choices, from standard-certified products and low-carbon product brands to advanced products from new projects or net-zero technologies.
- Incorporate climate factors in procurement decisions, such as assessing product-level and industry-level emission impacts, what reduction actions will be enabled, technology costs, risks, and the knowledge requirement.
- Leverage flexible purchasing mechanisms (e.g., small-batch contracts, long-term agreements, group purchases, direct investments, or book and claim) to balance near-term cost-effectiveness with long-term decarbonization investments.
