Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy

This briefing by RMI argues that digital traceability tools are essential for managing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) risks in international supply chains, particularly for materials critical to the energy transition. It highlights the need to move beyond greenhouse gas (GHG) reporting to include human rights and environmental impacts, proposing a decentralized digital system to ensure a just and equitable transition.

• Material supply chains are frequently plagued by human rights abuses, specifically child labor and modern slavery. In the case of cobalt, which is essential for lithium-ion batteries, 60 percent of global production originates in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 20 percent of mining involves approximately 40,000 children.
• Current ESG reporting is inefficient, functioning like a "game of telephone" with unstandardized and incomplete information passed between companies. RMI proposes a scalable, digital, and decentralized reporting system using digital barcodes to link ESG factors to products throughout the manufacturing process, allowing commodity prices to reflect full social and environmental costs.
• RMI's Climate Intelligence Program is developing an open-source blockchain data architecture through the Supply Chain Emissions Initiative. While initially designed to track embodied greenhouse gas emissions to distinguish high-carbon commodities from lower-carbon ones, RMI plans to expand this system to track broader ESG attributes.
• Regulatory shifts are increasing the pressure for sustainability disclosure. In February 2022, the European Commission announced plans for mandated corporate environmental and human rights due diligence, and in March 2022, the US Securities and Exchange Commission released an initial standard for mandatory GHG emissions reporting for listed companies.

APA

RMI (2022). Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy. https://rmi.org/resources/looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/

Chicago

RMI. Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy. 2022. https://rmi.org/resources/looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=RMI |title=Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy |date=1 April 2022 |url=https://rmi.org/resources/looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/ |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{rmi2022looking, author = {{RMI}}, title = {{Looking Beyond Greenhouse Gases: Everything You Don’t Want to Know about the Things You Buy}}, institution = {RMI}, year = {2022}, month = apr, url = {https://rmi.org/resources/looking-beyond-greenhouse-gases/}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }