Climate & Environment
Upstream Emissions
Emissions embedded in everything an organisation buys — the supply-side half of Scope 3, usually the largest part of a footprint.
Definition
Upstream emissions are the greenhouse gas emissions occurring in an organisation's value chain before its own operations: extraction, production and transport of purchased goods and services, capital goods, fuel- and energy-related activities, business travel, employee commuting and upstream leased assets (Scope 3 categories 1–8). For most companies in most sectors, upstream categories — above all purchased goods and services — dominate the total footprint, often by an order of magnitude over direct emissions.
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