The complexity of Scope 3 emissions

Marketa from Wholegrain Digital wrote article a while back which touches on the complexity that surrounds Scope 3 emissions as they are currently measured under the Greenhouse Gas Protocol (GHG Protocol). The Wholegrain team do a great job at writing openly about this kind of stuff (see: The challenge of calculating our company carbon emissions). One section from Marketa's post that struck me most was:

Google and Mozilla provide an interesting perspective on the implications of different reporting methodologies. Mozilla, a smaller company with around 1,000 employees, reported a carbon footprint of approximately 800k tonnes CO2e in 2019, attributing 98% of it to the use of its products by end users (Scope 3 emissions). In contrast, Google, with around 100k employees, reported a carbon footprint of 13 million tonnes in the same year, without including the use of its services by end users in their Scope 3 emissions. The significant difference in environmental impact raises concerns about transparency and accurate reporting.

Looking at Google's 2023 Environmental Report, they do report 7.6 million tonnes of CO2e Scope 3 emissions, representing 75% of their overall emissions for the year. Year-on-year Google's Scope 3 emissions have been decreasing. Meanwhile Scope 2 emissions have progressively risen over time, and Scope 1 emissions have seen a big jump as the World has emerged from the COVID pandemic.

It's also worth noting what's included in Google's reporting of Scope 3 emissions. They list the following categories:

• Category 1: Purchased goods and services
• Category 2: Capital goods
• Category 4: Upstream transportation and distribution
• Category 6: Business travel
• Category 7: Employee commuting, including
  teleworking
• Category 11: Use of sold products
• Category 12: End-of-life treatment of sold products

Double-clicking on Category 11: Use of sold products, only covers the use of Google's flagship hardware products. Unlike Mozilla, who's emissions baseline included Firefox desktop and mobile, Google's reporting does not include (from what I can tell) the Chrome web browser, or other user software/apps. I dare say it would result in a pretty sizeable addition to Google's reported Scope 3 emissions if these were to be included.