A logistics company's biggest slice of Scope 3 is upstream transport

The transportation services — that is, logistics — section of CDP's technical note sets out data from 117 companies that responded to the 2021 CDP climate change questionnaire for investors.

Three slices

Category 4, "upstream transportation and distribution" — stated as one that should be measured and reported, and the largest share of the sector's Scope 3 at 32%, or 10% of total Scope 1+2+3.

Category 3, "fuel- and energy-related activities" — the extraction, production and transport emissions of the fuel burned in Scope 1. 24% of Scope 3, 8% of total Scope 1+2+3.

Category 1, "purchased goods and services" — vehicle production emissions. 18% of Scope 3, 6% of total Scope 1+2+3.

There is a gap beside the size

Something has to be read alongside those figures.

Only a little over half of responding companies reported category 3 as "relevant, calculated", and fewer than half did so for category 1.

Which means even the second largest category was being calculated by barely more than half of them.

Why it does not get calculated

Not because the method is unknown. Category 4 can only be calculated if you know how the freight coming to you from a supplier travelled and over which legs. It happened in someone else's vehicle, and without a record of that leg only estimates remain.

What separates "relevant, calculated" from "relevant, not calculated" is not willingness but data.

※ This article cites pages 62–63 of CDP's technical note v3.0 (2024-06-28).

This article expands one section of LCS international standards analysis 2, Where CDP Puts Transport. The full report works from the CDP technical note itself (v3.0, 2024-06-28) as its primary source with page numbers given, and does not fill in figures the document does not contain.