Emissions Measurement in Supply Chains: Business Realities and Challenges

The report examines the complexities of measuring and reporting Scope 3 emissions, highlighting how fragmented data, inconsistent standards, and high costs create barriers to decarbonization. It provides sectoral analyses of agriculture, mining, and steel, and argues for the development of interoperable, feasible, and accurate measurement systems to prevent reporting obligations from becoming non-tariff trade barriers, particularly for SMEs and developing countries.

• Scope 3 emissions typically constitute the majority of a company's total carbon footprint, averaging 75%, and are increasingly subject to mandatory reporting requirements through initiatives like the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) and the US SEC's proposed climate-related disclosures.
• The agriculture and food sector faces unique measurement difficulties due to extreme fragmentation, with over 600 million farms globally, and biological variability where differences in soils, climate, and weather affect emissions.
• In the mining sector, Scope 3 reporting is predominantly focused on upstream activities; downstream reporting is underdeveloped due to a perceived lack of control and incentive to monitor emissions when the responsibility for decarbonization lies with other sectors.
• The steel industry suffers from a fragmented reporting landscape with three different production routes (integrated, secondary/scrap, and direct reduced iron) and multiple non-harmonized standards from worldsteel, ISO, and ResponsibleSteel.
• There is a significant risk that complex emissions measurement and reporting obligations could act as non-tariff barriers to trade, disproportionately burdening small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and firms in developing countries.
• Effective measurement systems must balance three competing features: accuracy for benchmarking and trust, feasibility to ensure costs do not distract from actual decarbonization, and interoperability to allow data exchange across different industries and jurisdictions.

APA

World Economic Forum (2023). Emissions Measurement in Supply Chains: Business Realities and Challenges. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Emissions_Measurement_in_Supply_Chains_2023.pdf

Chicago

World Economic Forum. Emissions Measurement in Supply Chains: Business Realities and Challenges. 2023. https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Emissions_Measurement_in_Supply_Chains_2023.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=World Economic Forum |title=Emissions Measurement in Supply Chains: Business Realities and Challenges |date=November 2023 |url=https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Emissions_Measurement_in_Supply_Chains_2023.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{worldeconomicforum2023emissions, author = {{World Economic Forum}}, title = {{Emissions Measurement in Supply Chains: Business Realities and Challenges}}, institution = {World Economic Forum}, year = {2023}, month = nov, url = {https://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Emissions_Measurement_in_Supply_Chains_2023.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }