Dive Brief:
- Despite a fragmented regulatory landscape, 73% of over 1,000 sustainability leaders surveyed for a recent report said their companies are voluntarily disclosing data on scope 3 or indirect emissions.
- The report, released by sustainability consulting and software company Sphera, found that 59% of sustainability leaders increased their companies’ sustainability budgets in 2025, while 80% said recent regulatory changes have accelerated sustainability reporting.
- Seventy-five percent of sustainability leaders said regulations have accelerated scope 3 reporting in particular. But the report noted that the quality of scope 3 emissions data remains a pain point, with 45% of leaders saying they only have limited assurance in this information.
Dive Insight:
The January report from Sphera — which is owned by private equity firm Blackstone — surveyed 1,034 sustainability leaders in 15 different industries across the globe.
The past year has seen the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission backtrack on its support for the climate-risk disclosure rule, and the European Union dramatically shrink the scope of its Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive. But other legislations coming online, such as California’s Senate Bill 253 and the EU’s Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, in addition to looming possibilities, such as a New York Senate bill, continue to exert pressure.
Meanwhile, nearly 40 global jurisdictions have adopted or are planning to adopt a form of the climate disclosures aligned with the International Sustainability Standards Board’s frameworks, according to the ISSB’s jurisdictional working group.
For sustainability leaders, that means that scope 3 emissions — which comprise all indirect greenhouse gases produced in a company’s supply chain — are still top of mind, with 72% of leaders saying transition planning has been accelerated.
But a stumbling block for companies is a lack of resources, the report said, with many organizations lacking an independent sustainability team. Only 14% of leaders said the team sat under a dedicated chief sustainability officer, with other companies directing sustainability efforts from their legal and compliance, finance, or strategy and innovation divisions. Twenty-seven percent of respondents had teams of 10 or fewer working on sustainability.
In addition, ensuring the quality of scope 3 data continues to be a major challenge, with companies moving to improve accuracy and transparency, per the report. Only 9.25% of respondents said they still exclusively used spend-based data, considered to be less accurate, while 36% said they are moving beyond spend-only methods to incorporate mass-based inputs, and 45% now collect supplier data directly. A spend-based carbon accounting method calculates greenhouse gas emissions based on how much a company spends on goods or services and is often considered to have limitations as it relies on industry averages, assuming all goods and services within the same category have identical carbon footprints.
The survey also reported an uptick in companies incorporating or looking to incorporate artificial intelligence across their operations. Given the unwieldiness of aggregating data across spreadsheets, supplier portals, enterprise resource planning systems and product databases, over half of respondents said they are in the early stages of AI adoption. Just under half already use dedicated sustainability software.
The categories that drive the bulk of scope 3 emissions are also the ones that are most underreported, the report said. Only 34% of leaders said they report purchased goods and services, despite it being the largest scope 3 category for most sectors. Forty-one percent said they reported fuel and energy related activities, and 34% reported waste generated in operations.
However, the majority of respondents — 89% — said they plan to expand scope 3 reporting in the future.
