Search

Target-setting overhaul offers more options for reducing Scope 3 emissions

We are an online community created around a smart and easy to access information hub which is focused on providing proven global and local insights about sustainability

21 Mar, 2025

This post was originally published on Green Biz

Source: Green Biz

Proposed new guidelines from the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) include a significant overhaul of the system for setting and hitting Scope 3 emissions targets, one of the thorniest challenges faced by sustainability teams. 

The SBTi’s current net-zero standard requires Scope 3 to be treated in much the same way as Scopes 1 and 2: Companies must measure the emissions associated with each and begin to reduce them at a rate that puts them in line with the global goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The approach has frustrated many companies, partly because they often have limited visibility into supply chains and, as a result, struggle to measure — let alone mitigate —the emissions generated within them.

The updated standard, released earlier this week, outlined a different way of doing things. Rather than treat Scope 3 emissions as a single entity, the SBTi proposed that companies set separate targets for the value-chain activities — procurement of concrete or business travel, for example — that generate the most emissions. 

Flexible mechanisms

Crucially, the SBTi also offered a tentative blessing to an emerging emission-reducing mechanism: indirect mitigation, also known as value-chain intervention or insetting. With this method, companies help fund decarbonization projects of suppliers, such as paying farmers to use regenerative agriculture methods, and earn credits that count against Scope 3 totals. Because confirming a link with a specific supplier in a complex chain is often challenging, companies can also earn credit for interventions that take place within a “supply shed” — a group of suppliers, usually in the same region, that provides similar goods.

Take the example of a company trying to reduce emissions from steel procurement. It may have funds available for the purpose, but can’t identify the facilities that produce the steel it uses because they are too far back in the supply chain. “Many companies have Scope 3 in their accounts but don’t know who the emitter is,” said an experienced sustainability consultant who asked not to be named because he works with clients on Scope 3 matters. “If I give you an instrument to invest in mitigation, I’m expanding your options.”

Domino effect

Allowing supply-shed methods is a “very positive” step, added Patrick Flynn, founder of Switchboard, a climate consultancy. Flynn is a former global head of sustainability at Salesforce, where he helped introduce the Sustainability Exhibit, contract language that included a requirement that direct suppliers set science-based targets. While impactful, Flynn noted that this “domino” strategy, in which your supplier is supposed to pressure their suppliers to decarbonize, takes time and is less effective as you travel further back in the supply chain. Indirect mitigation, said Flynn, allows companies to move quicker.

The SBTi is now soliciting feedback through an online survey, until June 1. One issue to look for in future drafts is additional detail on the accounting rules for indirect mitigation. These rules will need to strike a balance between giving companies the flexibility to invest across a supply shed with the need to keep funding targeted to a specific Scope 3 emission. Without such a restriction, investments may end up flowing to cheaper projects that don’t help decarbonize the target activity.

The SBTi won’t have to start from scratch to craft these rules. Earlier this year, the Advanced and Indirect Mitigation Platform, which is being tested by Amazon and others, began a pilot of cross-sector guidelines for accounting for value-chain interventions. SustainCERT, a company that verifies carbon projects, now has over 30 interventions listed on its registry

These advances, together with feedback from companies that are struggling with Scope 3, likely motivated the SBTi’s proposed changes, suggested Sarah Leugers, chief growth officer at Gold Standard, a standards body for climate and development projects. “They’re seeing those tools emerge while also seeing how difficult it is to influence suppliers,” she said. “So they are creating flexibility.”

The post Target-setting overhaul offers more options for reducing Scope 3 emissions appeared first on Trellis.

Pass over the stars to rate this post. Your opinion is always welcome.
[Total: 0 Average: 0]

You may also like…

“Europe Just Flipped the Switch”: World’s Biggest Sand Battery Goes Live and Instantly Slashes CO2 Emissions by 70%

IN A NUTSHELL 🔋 Finland launches the world’s first industrial-scale sand battery to store surplus renewable energy as heat. 🌍 The project aims to reduce CO2-equivalent emissions by nearly 70%, supporting Finland’s goal for climate neutrality by 2035. 🔄 This innovative system plays a crucial role in grid stability and promotes a circular economy by […]
The post “Europe Just Flipped the Switch”: World’s Biggest Sand Battery Goes Live and Instantly Slashes CO2 Emissions by 70% appeared first on Sustainability Times.

Cybersecurity is about more aspects of ESG than just governance

Cybersecurity is about more aspects of ESG than just governance

Security operations teams must increasingly do their bit to help their employers achieve environmental targets, which may require some system and strategic changes.

For several years now, annual sustainability reports by listed Australian companies have provided a window into cybersecurity strategies employed at these companies. But in spite of the report name, there is often no link between security and sustainability in the information presented.

As these reports cover environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, addressing cyber risks comes under the governance piece. Yet, the security team — through its choices of hardware, software and services — has a contribution to make on the sustainability front as well.

It is commonly acknowledged that IT infrastructure and data centres are large energy users. Teams in these spaces have worked to become more efficient: rightsizing infrastructure provisioning to fit workloads, utilising more renewable energy sources, hosting equipment in data centres that are rated to be efficient with power and water consumption and the like.

That same level of investment and effort is yet to be brought to bear on the work of the security team and their technology stack. One reason for this is likely to be the intense pressure that security teams are under to protect ever-increasing attack surfaces and ward off a constantly evolving spectrum of cyber threats.

But this is likely to change.

Security teams need to be prepared to contribute to more than the governance aspect of ESG — they need to contribute to the environmental goals of the organisation as well.

This is starting to be seen in several initiatives. These include the adoption and implementation of more energy-efficient security systems, together with a greater emphasis on proactive and preventative security.

Energy-efficient systems

As with other types of information technology, it continues to be the case that the efficiency of security systems is improving over time with each iteration or update.

A key performance indicator is the energy consumption per gigabit of data throughput for a piece of equipment. Next-generation security gateways are a security-specific example of hardware that continues to get more efficient with each new generation of the technology.

As a case in point, a recent Check Point ESG report showed that a current-generation security gateway uses 73% less power consumption per throughput (Gbps) compared to the previous model. This reduction comes alongside a 112% improvement in threat prevention capabilities, meaning the newer version is more efficient than its predecessor in multiple contexts, not just in energy usage concerns. And, to be clear, this kind of improvement is seen consistently between versions of systems.

This illustrates that next-generation security technologies can simultaneously enhance protection and energy efficiency. By aligning to this cadence of technology upgrades, organisations can consistently reduce their environmental footprint while maintaining effective security controls.

Proactive detection and remediation

Another beneficial strategy when seeking to run security operations more efficiently is to focus more on preventative and proactive forms of security.

The logic here is that reactively dealing with security incidents is an intensive exercise. It is taxing on the individuals that have to perform this work, but also in financial terms. We know that the financial implications of a breach continue to increase over time. One aspect of financial implication is the energy-intensive processes such as restoring backups, along with rebooting, restoring and/or rebuilding entire systems.

Clearly, energy efficiency is not the primary goal of incident response. But from a broader ESG perspective, there is interest in organisations having strong cyber risk and security controls together with layered protections in place to mitigate against the risk of an attack, and/or to detect and isolate any infected infrastructure early on, such that any financial, productivity and bottom-line costs can be avoided. As energy is a considerable financial input to IT costs, it makes sense not to add to these costs due to a cyber incident taking place.

Preventative measures are also required because some existing and emerging types of attacks can run up big energy bills if they go undetected. Cryptomining malware, for example, remains a persistent threat despite its peak in 2018 when it affected 40% of analysed organisations. Even recently, malware such as XMRig has been detected targeting gaming engines. The collective energy consumption of cryptomining is estimated at a staggering 125 terawatt-hours annually — highlighting the need to quickly detect this kind of malicious payload before it can be used to run up a big bill.

Data poisoning in AI systems represents another emerging concern. These attacks compromise machine learning models, often requiring complete retraining to remediate — an extremely energy-intensive process. As organisations increasingly rely on AI-powered tools for decision-making, protecting these systems also means avoiding redundant and costly training cycles that consume substantial computational resources.

The combined benefit

Cybersecurity is more than a governance play — it also has a growing role in helping meet the environmental aspects of an organisation’s ESG strategy. By considering the energy implications of security operations, maintaining infrastructure that is both secure and sustainable, and prioritising a proactive security approach, organisations can protect both their business interests and environmental resources.

Les Williamson, Regional Director Australia and New Zealand, Check Point Software Technologies

Top image credit: iStock.com/Vertigo3d

0 Comments