If you’re reading this, you probably know the definitions of Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions set out in the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, aka the bible of carbon footprinting:

Scope 1: emissions from sources owned or controlled by the organisation

Scope 2: emissions arising from electricity purchased by the organisation

Scope 3: absolutely everything else

I’ve always struggled with this.

For a start, Scope 3 is just too big. To lump in the use of hire cars with the refining of raw materials purchased by a second tier supplier and the use of the organisation’s product is just mind bending. What’s the point of throwing all of this together into one big blob? I mean, if you were presenting your organisation’s footprint to the Board, classifying it by Scopes 1, 2 and 3 is just meaningless.

Secondly the definition of what is Scope 1 and what is Scope 3 can be pernickety to say the least. If you lease a fleet of vehicles where the ownership is deemed to be with you, then their emissions are deemed Scope 1, whereas if it is an ‘operating lease’, the emissions are Scope 3.

Why does this matter? Because most organisations starting out on their Sustainability journey want to start by addressing the issues the emissions they can directly control. Many assume this means Scopes 1 and 2, but obviously there’s a chunk of Scope 3 which should be in there for everyone – buildings under operating leases, business travel, emissions relating to water use etc. If they simply covered Scope 1 and 2, they could appear to reduce their carbon footprint by, say, asking staff to use their own vehicles for business purposes rather than a fleet vehicle when emissions could be going up.

The NHS have recognised this. They set two Net Zero targets (see pic). One is for the “NHS Carbon Footprint” which covers Scope 1, 2 and those directly applicable bits of Scope 3 I describe above plus some NHS specific things like metered dose inhalers. The other target for the “NHS Carbon Footprint Plus” which includes the traditional supply chain plus some stuff that doesn’t fit with the GHG Protocol such as patient travel. This means that each NHS Trust can start with the former and move on to the latter.

Building on this, I think a reframing of the Scopes as follows would make far more sense:

Scope 1: as per current Scope 1, but adding in emissions from business travel of all forms and from buildings/premises used by the organisation but which don’t currently meet Scope 1 requirements due to the nature of the lease.

Scope 2: electricity plus water supply/treatment and waste disposal, ie all basic utilities.

Scope 3: the traditional supply chain (ie excluding those elements I’ve added to Scope 1 and 2).

Scope 4: emissions from the distribution, use and disposal of the product/service (eg if you build cars, the emissions relating to the car in use).

This would produce data in much more useful and comprehensible categories – which is surely the whole point of the exercise. Thoughts?