The dominant topic in the field of sustainability is climate change. The steadily increasing popularity of the “Net Zero Emisson” goal points to this, as does the latest market study for sustainable investments (SSF). Climate change leads to long-lasting transformations, and the economic risks associated with it are high. There is adaptation pressure in almost all sectors of the economy: innovations, the development of new business areas and the abandonment of previous technologies and products to reduce direct or indirect dependence on fossil energy can be the result of such pressure.
These processes are cross-company and cross-sector and can be relevant at all stages of the value chains. The climate data that we offer − Scope 3 including downstream and upstream − is therefore highly relevant.
Within the context of sustainability reporting and analyses of portfolios with regards to climate scenarios, the effects of climate change are to be recorded and quantified. This is demanding and can only be done by approximation. Without meaningful data, the analysis may be incomplete and lead to wrong decisions. A reduction in greenhouse gas emissions during the production of, e.g., transport vehicles, may be meaningless if the reduction is many times greater than the emissions during the use of the product and alternatives are already on the market or under development. Relevant to the recording of the double materiality, at the environmental and company level, is the consideration of the entire value chain. This means that the impacts and risks that are physically, technically, economically and legally transferred along these chains are also considered in the analysis.
Inrate climate data covers the value chain from Scope 1 to 3 upstream and downstream. More and more companies report on their own direct emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), but there is a lack of data on the value chain (Scope 3).
Inrate has developed the Climate Impact Model to be able to determine climate data systematically across the entire value chain. This is crucial for risk analysis. The model is sector-specific and based on macroeconomic statistics (input-output matrix), which capture the interlinkages. The estimates show that the reported data on Scope 1 and 2 account for about a quarter of the total emissions of an economic activity.
