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The Supplier Cascade is a methodology developed by the We Mean Business Coalition and partners to address the complexity of Scope 3 emissions. It encourages companies to ask their Tier 1 suppliers to make science-aligned net zero commitments, report progress annually, and repeat this process with their own suppliers to create a 'domino effect' of climate action. The guide outlines three specific requirements for implementation, provides a definition of credible commitments (aligned with 1.5°C), and suggests metrics for tracking progress, such as the percentage of suppliers by spend who have committed to net zero.

The Supplier Cascade is a framework developed by the We Mean Business Coalition and partners to address the difficulty of tracking and reducing Scope 3 emissions, which often exceed 70% of a company's carbon footprint. It encourages companies to focus on their direct relationship with Tier 1 suppliers, asking them to set science-based targets, report progress annually, and require their own Tier 1 suppliers to do the same, creating a 'domino effect' of climate action. The guide outlines specific requirements for implementation, ranging from voluntary asks to best practices involving the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) and the SME Climate Hub, while emphasizing that the approach is designed to be scalable and manageable for procurement teams without requiring deep technical knowledge.

The document outlines a comprehensive leadership framework for companies to address the climate crisis. It emphasizes setting science-based net-zero targets aligned with a 1.5°C pathway, integrating climate goals into core business strategies, advocating for bold public policy, and maintaining transparent disclosure of progress and governance.

The We Mean Business Coalition analyzed 30 early adopters of the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) to showcase innovative solutions for challenging disclosure requirements. The report highlights diverse approaches to double materiality assessments, TCFD-aligned climate risk quantification, Scope 3 emissions 'hot-spotting', and supply chain due diligence. It emphasizes that while many early adopters are only partially aligned with the regulation, their methods for reporting on internal controls, whistleblower cases, and climate transition action plans serve as practical guides for companies facing mandatory reporting from 2024.

The document argues that current corporate GHG accounting often conflates physical inventories with market-based performance accounting, leading to opacity and lackluster climate finance. By analyzing the Paris Agreement's architecture—which strictly separates national physical inventories from market-based 'emissions balances'—the authors propose a more robust corporate framework. Key recommendations include adopting dual-ledger reporting, establishing governance bodies for accreditation of market instruments, and implementing standardized biennial reporting to track annual progress toward net-zero targets rather than focusing solely on a single target year.

The report analyzes the first wave of CSRD climate reports from 93 large EU companies, finding that while limited assurance is standard, many companies are restating or erasing historical data to improve quality. It identifies a trend toward integrating sustainability internal controls with financial systems and notes that while GHG reporting is improving, monetized climate risk and opportunity reporting remain rare. The document also evaluates the adoption of the EU Taxonomy and the reporting of political lobbying and climate-related executive incentives.

The We Mean Business Coalition identifies critical failures in the ESG data ecosystem, noting that historical emissions data is often inadequate for meaningful analysis due to blatant errors and inconsistent reporting. The report categorizes these issues into company-level reporting failures, data provider extraction errors, and structural gaps such as the lack of central repositories and misalignment between GHG and financial reporting boundaries. To resolve these, the authors advocate for the global adoption of ISSB standards, mandatory XBRL tagging, and the alignment of GHG operational boundaries with financial reporting standards.

The guidance outlines a three-step approach—Count it, Change it, and Scale it—for apparel and footwear companies to manage their climate impact, emphasizing the need to address significant scope 3 emissions through science-based targets, energy efficiency, and cross-sector collaboration.

The document argues that a low-carbon product standard for the U.S. steel industry, featuring an emissions intensity benchmark and tradable credits, can drive the adoption of abatement technologies. It recommends covering intermediate steel products (sheets, plates, bars, beams, pipes, and tubes) and including Scope 1, 2, and significant Scope 3 emissions in the benchmark. To prevent carbon leakage and protect competitiveness, the author suggests applying the standard to all steel products produced and sold in the U.S., including those from importers of upstream and downstream products. The paper emphasizes that while such a standard is a significant tool, a suite of complementary policies—including R&D funding, carbon pricing, and production tax credits—is necessary for full sector decarbonization.

WRI's 2010 greenhouse gas inventory recorded 4,309 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, a significant increase from 2009 due to the expanded inclusion of all Scope 3 categories. Using 2010 as a base year, WRI has set 2020 targets to reduce Scope 2 electricity emissions by 50%, business travel emissions by 20%, and all other Scope 3 categories by 20%.

The document presents a methodology developed by the World Resources Institute and partners to standardize corporate GHG accounting for deforestation and land occupation. It addresses the inconsistency in current corporate reporting caused by the flexibility of existing frameworks like the GHG Protocol's Land Sector and Removals Guidance (LSRG). By using open, globally consistent spatial datasets, the methodology provides a common reference for emission factors across various crops and jurisdictions to improve transparency and comparability in scope 1 and scope 3 inventories.

The World Resources Institute (WRI) employs a comprehensive greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting methodology covering Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions. The inventory uses an operational control consolidation approach and has established 2019 as its base year for 2030 reduction targets. Scope 1 includes direct emissions from diesel generators and office refrigerators. Scope 2 utilizes both location-based and market-based methods for purchased electricity, incorporating renewable energy certificates for US operations. Scope 3 is the most extensive, covering purchased goods and services (Category 1) via a spend-based USEEIO model, fuel- and energy-related activities (Category 3), waste (Category 5), business travel (Category 6), employee commuting (Category 7), and endowment investments (Category 15). The methodology emphasizes the use of regional emission factors and annual staff surveys to estimate impacts across WRI's global network.

The report examines the environmental impacts of different meat production systems and warns that "better meat"—often defined by social or ethical attributes—can counterintuitively result in higher environmental impacts per kilogram of protein. To mitigate this, the report advises companies to prioritize shifting toward plant-based foods and alternative proteins, and to further reduce meat volumes if "better meat" strategies increase overall emissions.

The World Resources Institute and partners have developed a standardized geospatial dataset to operationalize the GHG Protocol’s Land Sector and Removals Guidance for corporate reporting. The dataset provides emission factors for 42 major crops across global, national, provincial, and municipal levels for the years 2020–24, covering carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Findings indicate significant variation in emissions by crop and region, with subnational data revealing 'hotspots' that national averages obscure.

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard provides a standardized framework for organizations to inventory and report indirect GHG emissions. Its primary goal is to enable companies to identify the most significant emission reduction opportunities within their value chains to inform sustainable business decisions. The standard aims to ensure inventories are 'true and fair' and cost-effective, support the development of emission reduction strategies, and ensure transparent public reporting. It is designed to be flexible, allowing companies to adopt a phased implementation approach to improve data quality over time.

The document provides a comparative analysis of climate policy tools in the US and China. It details the US's reliance on subnational carbon pricing and evolving SEC disclosure rules, and China's implementation of the world's largest emissions trading system (ETS) and its 'common but differentiated responsibilities' approach to international finance. It concludes by suggesting cooperation on sustainable procurement, emission accounting standards, and subnational carbon market exchanges.

The briefing examines the climate policy landscapes of the U.S. and China, noting that while the U.S. lacks a national carbon price, it has significant subnational activity. China has established the world's largest emissions trading scheme (ETS) but maintains that it is not obligated to provide international climate finance as a developing nation. Both countries are advancing corporate climate disclosure rules, though they differ on the requirement for Scope 3 emissions. The paper suggests cooperation on sustainable procurement, data standards for emission accounting, and subnational carbon market exchanges.

The GHG Protocol has launched the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) and Product Life Cycle Standards to enable businesses to account for emissions beyond their direct operations. The Corporate Value Chain Standard allows companies to assess 15 categories of upstream and downstream activities, which often constitute the majority of a firm's total emissions. The Product Life Cycle Standard focuses on emissions from raw materials through disposal to improve product design and efficiency. These standards were developed over three years with input from 2,300 participants across 55 countries.

The document features endorsements from executives at companies such as UPS, Alcoa, PepsiCo, S.C. Johnson, Tesco, Walmart, Kraft Foods, and the Carbon Trust regarding the utility of the GHG Protocol standards. These leaders emphasize that the new standards provide a harmonized, globally consistent methodology for measuring and managing greenhouse gas emissions across corporate value chains and product life cycles, which in turn informs strategic business decisions and customer education.

Corporate GHG inventories are management tools used by companies to quantify emissions, identify sources, and track reductions. Following standards like the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, companies categorize emissions into Scope 1 (direct), Scope 2 (indirect from purchased energy), and Scope 3 (other indirect). These inventories differ from national or regional inventories, which use proxy data for entire sectors, but they feed into GHG registries such as The Climate Registry and the Carbon Disclosure Project.