A Supplier-Enablement Tool for Faster Scope 3 Progress

Why supplier action matters (and why buyers must help)

The supply chain is typically where the bulk of corporate climate impact lives. CDP’s global analysis shows that upstream emissions (scope 3) are, on average, 11.4x higher than a company’s direct operational (scope 1 & 2) footprint. That’s why it’s becoming the norm for the industry to believe that purchasers can’t meet climate goals without engaging suppliers.

The good news: supplier engagement works. CDP reports that suppliers, spurred by buyer programs, cut 43 million tonnes of CO₂e in one recent year—that’s more than Sweden’s annual emissions—demonstrating that structured buyer-supplier collaboration drives real results.

Policy momentum is adding urgency globally. Governments and regulators are moving beyond voluntary disclosure frameworks and making supply chain accountability a legal requirement. From Europe to the United States, new directives and climate disclosure laws are forcing companies—and by extension their suppliers—to collect better data, address environmental and social risks, and show verifiable progress on emissions reductions.

In the EU, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) applies starting with 2024 financial year reports (published in 2025), driving greater transparency across value chains, while the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which entered into force in July 2024, requires companies to identify and address human rights and environmental impacts throughout their global value chains. In the U.S., California’s SB 253 requires large companies doing business in the state to begin disclosing Scope 1 and 2 emissions in 2026 (based on FY2025 data) and Scope 3 emissions in 2027 (based on FY2026 data), effectively pushing suppliers to strengthen data quality, governance, and reduction strategies.

Additionally, standards are aligning with this direction. The Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi) requires companies with material scope 3 to set targets that cover at least 67% of scope 3 emissions, and many leaders are now pairing near-term and net-zero targets.

And yet, the supplier responsibility baseline is still uneven. S&P Global’s Corporate Sustainability Assessment data shows only 44.5% of 9,688 assessed companies publicly disclose a supplier code of conduct, and when such codes exist, they often emphasize labor and ethics far more than environmental performance. Meanwhile, only a share of disclosing companies systematically engage suppliers on climate each year (about 41% in a recent analysis). There’s a lot of room—and need—for practical enablement.

Supplier engagement isn’t a “nice to have”—it’s stipulated.

What the CSA does—and why it helps suppliers

The CSA is an employee benefit that funds low-carbon home and personal transportation upgrades—think commuting electrification and mode shift (e-bikes, transit, EV charging), work-from-home efficiency (LEDs, smart plugs, heat pumps, weatherization), and other household-level decarbonization investments. It’s as simple as:

1. Employers provide funds to employees.
2. Employees make CSA-eligible upgrades.
3. Scope Zero verifies purchases and quantifies the impact.

For buyers, the CSA is a turnkey way to help suppliers:

• Evidence of climate action in CDP/EcoVadis: Suppliers can show structured programs with policies, incentives, uptake rates, and quantified outcomes. The CSA supports the kind of artifacts ESG ratings and disclosure frameworks reward.
• Advance aligned supplier engagement: If a buyer has a supplier engagement target (SET), co-funding the CSA at strategic suppliers is a concrete capacity-building mechanism that accelerates the SET’s adoption and results (SBTi).
• Prepare for CSRD/CSDDD: European reporting and due diligence rules emphasize value-chain risk management, remedy, and performance improvement. The CSA supports a “just transition” lens—benefits for people alongside carbon—while producing data that suppliers can roll into ESRS narratives (EU).
• Deliver near-term, distributed reductions: Many suppliers, especially SMBs, lack CapEx for deep decarbonization. The CSA channels micro-investments at the workforce scale into thousands of small, fast projects that add up and de-risk longer-lead operational upgrades.

For suppliers, the CSA is an engagement, education, and retention-friendly employee benefit that reduces commuting and work-from-home emissions (scope 3, category 7), which can also improve competitiveness in sustainable procurement assessments and supply chain questionnaires.

How the CSA becomes a supplier solution

Think of the CSA as a supplier-enablement tool that buyers can deploy across strategic and long-tail suppliers. Instead of relying only on audits, disclosures, or compliance language, the CSA gives suppliers something practical they can implement quickly—an employee-facing benefit that delivers measurable emissions reductions, improves workforce engagement, and generates disclosure-ready data. By equipping suppliers with a turnkey solution that’s both climate-positive and people-positive, buyers can accelerate scope 3 progress, strengthen supplier relationships, and create a more resilient, future-ready value chain. Below are a few examples of how this can be rolled out.

Buyer-sponsored supplier CSA funds (co-investment)

In this model, the buying company establishes a pool of funds that eligible suppliers can access to support their employees’ CSAs. The funds may be provided as matching contributions or full sponsorship, with priority given to strategic suppliers or those in high-emissions categories. This approach removes budget friction for smaller suppliers, boosts program adoption, and rapidly scales a credible climate benefit across the value chain. Suppliers benefit from immediate employee goodwill, while also generating a quantifiable stream of emissions reductions that can be disclosed in reporting frameworks.

What this looks like in practice: A global buyer identifies 50 strategic suppliers in emissions-intensive categories and co-funds CSAs at 50-100% for the first year. Incentives are stacked for high employee enrollment and CO2e avoided. Suppliers receive a turnkey starter kit—including policy templates, approved spending categories, and ready-to-use communications assets—alongside employer dashboards to track progress and support disclosures.

Preferred supplier criteria & RFP signals

Another option is to integrate CSA participation into procurement processes. Buyers can include green employee benefits programs and CSA-related policies and outcomes in RFX questionnaires (RFPs, RFIs, and RFQs) and supplier scorecards, alongside traditional climate metrics such as emissions targets, renewable energy procurement, and product-level carbon footprints. By embedding the CSA into sourcing criteria, buyers send a clear market signal that low-carbon employee engagement matters. Suppliers quickly see that offering programs like the CSA can strengthen their bids, improve their chances of preferred supplier status, and help them win more business. This approach encourages proactive investment in employee-level decarbonization—such as commuting or work-from-home efficiency—without relying solely on mandates or audits.

What this looks like in practice: A company revises its procurement scorecard to award points for employee-level decarbonization programs like the CSA. In competitive bids, suppliers with the CSA in place are more likely to reach the shortlist or secure preferred supplier status. Over time, this drives adoption across the supply base as suppliers recognize CSA participation as a differentiator that directly affects contract opportunities.

Supplier development and training

For suppliers earlier in their climate journey, CSA can be paired with training and enablement. Suppliers receive guidance on how to design and launch a commuting policy, communicate benefits to employees, measure enrollment and impact, and align CSA program outcomes with buyer expectations under frameworks like SBTi or CSRD. Since many suppliers—especially small and mid-sized businesses—struggle with limited internal ESG capacity, this approach helps them overcome barriers to adoption while building the documentation and processes needed for credible reporting.

What this looks like in practice: A buyer launches supplier development and training with a cohort of 20 suppliers who are just beginning to address scope 3 emissions. Suppliers join training sessions and receive templates for program design, internal communications, and data tracking. Scope Zero provides ongoing support, helping suppliers quickly stand up programs that employees embrace and that generate disclosure-ready emissions reductions. Within the first year, the buyer is able to demonstrate meaningful progress across a portion of its supply chain while helping its partners build long-term capability.

Why the CSA complements (not replaces) product-level decarbonization

Suppliers still need to decarbonize operations (scope 1 & 2) and quantify product footprints for scope 3, category 1 (Purchased Goods & Services). The CSA doesn’t replace renewable PPAs or low-carbon materials. But instead, the CSA can:

• Deliver near-term, low-friction reductions at scale
• Build an engaged culture across the workforce that makes bigger changes stick
• Generate disclosure-ready evidence for ratings and regulation

Getting started with Scope Zero as a supplier-responsibility partner

Turning supplier responsibility from a policy into real progress doesn’t have to be complicated. Buyers can take a structured, step-by-step approach that aligns with existing procurement and sustainability processes. By starting small, signaling seriousness, and building in the right data practices from the beginning, organizations can quickly demonstrate impact while setting the stage for scalable supplier engagement.

1. Map where the CSA amplifies your goals: Use your spend/emissions by category to identify suppliers where commuting is material, sites are concentrated, or employee retention is critical.
2. Design incentives that signal seriousness: Co-funding, recognition, and preferred-supplier points accelerate adoption.
3. Standardize data capture: Align CSA metrics with requirements and supplier-engagement tracking, enabling suppliers to reuse the data.
4. Pilot fast, learn, scale: Start with 10–20 suppliers, tune eligibility lists and comms, then scale to the long tail through your procurement portal.

A menu of options: How Scope Zero supports organizations in supplier responsibility

• CSA for Suppliers (turnkey): Launch and manage supplier CSAs, including eligibility rules, verification, reporting, and impact dashboards. Training, comms assets, and office hours for supplier HR/ESG teams to drive enrollment and measure outcomes.
• Buyer Co-Investment Program: Administer matching funds and performance-based bonuses for strategic suppliers.
• RFP & Scorecard Toolkit: Templates and criteria to embed CSA participation and outcomes into sourcing decisions.
• CSA Engage (capacity building): A lighter version of the Carbon Savings Account, designed to help organizations start building climate action into their culture. It lowers cost and complexity barriers so teams can take meaningful steps forward even when budgets are tight and momentum is critical.
• Disclosure-Ready Data Pack: Get artifacts when you need them. Dashboards are available for employees and employers, and our methods map to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol sections and industry standard themes and expectations.

Additional facts and stats to ground your supplier strategy

To understand why supplier enablement tools like the CSA matter, it helps to zoom out on the bigger picture. The numbers tell a consistent story: supply chain emissions dwarf operational footprints, most companies still lack robust supplier policies, and regulations are closing in fast.

At the same time, evidence shows that when buyers do engage, suppliers respond—and measurable reductions follow. The following facts and stats highlight both the scale of the challenge and the opportunity for companies that take supplier responsibility seriously.

• Supply chain is the big lever: Upstream scope 3 emissions average 11.4x operational emissions—hence supplier engagement’s outsized payoff (CDP).
• Engagement drives cuts: Suppliers reporting through CDP linked 43 Mt CO₂e of reductions to buyer engagement in a single program year (CDP).
• Codes exist, but are patchy: Only 44.5% of nearly 9,700 companies publicly disclose a supplier code of conduct; environmental criteria often lag labor/ethics content (S&P Global).
• Many companies are still building muscle: Roughly 41% of reporting companies say they engaged suppliers on climate last year—progress, but far from universal (We Mean Business Coalition).
• Targets require supplier action: SBTi criteria require Scope 3 targets (reduction and/or supplier engagement) covering ≥67% of Scope 3 when it is material (Science Based Targets Initiative).
• Regulation is here: First CSRD reports (covering 2024 financials) land in 2025; California SB 253 requires Scope 3 reporting beginning 2027 (FY2026 data) (Persefoni).

Supply Chain Resources

No company has to tackle supply chain decarbonization alone. A growing set of initiatives, frameworks, and collaborations exist to help buyers and suppliers align on data, targets, and action. From CDP’s Supply Chain membership program to practical guides on scope 3 reduction and cross-industry efforts like the Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT), these resources provide structure and momentum for organizations looking to turn supplier responsibility into measurable results.

• CDP Supply Chain Membership
• 4 Steps for Reducing Scope 3 Emissions and Accelerating Action Through Your Supply Chain
• Partnership for Carbon Transparency (PACT)

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