Approximately 90% of an average company’s emissions originate in its value chain. To make significant reductions to your enterprise’s carbon footprint, you will need to engage your value chain in emissions reduction.
To reduce emissions, businesses first need to calculate them – but large businesses often have suppliers numbering in the thousands, which makes it difficult to collect the necessary data. Yet more challenges are related to reduction: because value chain activities occur outside a business’s direct operations, there are limited options available to reduce the emissions from those activities.
When enterprises fail to account for and reduce their value chain emissions, they risk legal non-compliance and reputational damage. However, the businesses that implement significant decarbonization throughout their value chain will see benefits beyond simply mitigating these risks – they will secure competitive advantages including increased attractiveness to consumers, employees, and investors.
