Your organization probably measures its direct emissions—the ones that come from on-site combustion or that it purchases from the grid—but is it measuring the sizeable emissions from its supply chain? If not, you’re missing out on an opportunity to meet ambitious decarbonization goals and have a significant impact on organizational emissions.
What Does It Mean to Decarbonize Your Supply Chain?
Every business has some emissions—some will be more intensive and some will be less intensive, explained Robin Burton, director, global sustainable procurement, for CBRE, in his IFMA World Workplace 2025 session “Harnessing the FM Supply Chain to Drive Decarbonization.” These emissions are measured in three scopes:
- Scope 1: Emissions from burning fuels on-site yourself. This might include a boiler that burns fuel, a vehicle fleet, or gases leaked from the use of refrigerants.
- Scope 2: Purchased energy, heat, and cooling.
- Scope 3: Indirect sources of emissions. Scope 3 upstream includes things like employee commutes, the production of goods you buy, or the distribution required to bring products to your site. Scope 3 downstream represents the emissions generated by the use of your products, like waste treatment and the way customers buy and use your products.
Scope 1 and 2 are familiar to many facilities professionals because they’ve traditionally been a major focus of decarbonization programs—and they’re also under your organization’s direct control. You can replace a gas-fired boiler with an electric one and have an impact on your Scope 1 emissions. Scope 3 is more complicated—but it’s also an opportunity. “For an average company, Scope 3 accounts for 26 times more emissions than Scopes 1 and 2 combined,” Burton said. “That’s where we need to play if we’re going to make an impact.”
Why Supply Chain Decarbonization Matters for FMs
“Most of the suppliers in our industry haven’t started this journey yet,” Burton explained. “They haven’t started to handle their own emissions. They don’t know how to report accurately. There’s a lot of limitations they have in their own capability to participate in a program around emissions reduction.”
CBRE surveyed the industry and found that about 90% of its suppliers are either just getting started on emissions reduction or have zero experience in it. Only about 2% were considered advanced in the subject, he said.
That’s where facilities managers come in. In an average organization, FMs often have the closest relationship with suppliers. “That makes you essentially a bridge to driving new conversations with suppliers on emissions reductions,” Burton said.
One of the key challenges FMs and suppliers both face is that there are five approved methodologies for calculating supply chain emissions. Most companies are using what’s called a spend-based methodology, where you calculate the amount of spend you have with a supplier and that determines an estimated emissions per dollar of spending. However, this mathematical calculation ignores that some suppliers are doing much more than others to reduce their emissions.
“The new world you need to get to is to build a system with real supplier emissions data,” Burton said. “You need a way to be able to capture real data, so when they say they implemented a green car fleet or they’re purchasing green energy, you can see those initiatives demonstrated in the data they provide to you… Once you get that validated emissions data, it opens up a whole new world.” Having the right way to measure emissions is the first step in driving good conversations with suppliers about emissions reduction.
Where to Begin: 3 Supplier Levers to Pull
There are three levers you can pull when it comes to suppliers, Burton said: using the data you have to find better suppliers, identifying impactful interventions for existing suppliers, and driving performance improvements that you track over time.
- Finding the right suppliers: Once you get supplier data, you can start to benchmark your supplier options and make decisions on who is the best-performing from an emissions perspective. “Emissions starts to become a currency in the decision around which supplier to choose,” Burton said.
- Identifying impactful interventions: “Once you start surveying suppliers on the capabilities they have, you can start to map the different interventions or innovations you can put in place and map how much of an impact that might have from an emissions perspective,” Burton said. “Is it easy or difficult? Cheap or expensive? Is the emissions impact high, medium, or low? Think about how we can drive deeper conversations with suppliers on the emissions they bring to the table.”
- Driving performance improvements: It’s important to embed performance improvement on emissions into an ongoing process, Burton said. You can continuously collaborate with your suppliers to help them decarbonize and accelerate their—and your—net zero progress. “If you’re having a regular check-in with the supplier, make sure you’re talking to them about what the problem area is,” Burton said. “Tough base with them every six months or once a year, even to say what changes we’ve seen over that year. You need to be managing that on an ongoing basis.”
Having better conversations with your suppliers directly is a good place to start because it allows you to understand where they are today, Burton said. “If we ask them for emissions data, what comes back?” he asked. “You can reverse engineer your program around that and say, ‘Our supply chain is super mature, so we can just ask for the data,’ or more likely, ‘My supply chain is less mature.’”
You can also start by reaching out to your procurement team or a procurement support person—anyone who manages supplier relationships for your organization—and ask whether they have a process through which you can collect emissions data.
“It’s about willingness to participate,” Burton added. “We’re doing more of a carrot rather than stick approach at the moment, and I’m looking for a supplier who’s willing to try it, at least, and give it a go. A lot of suppliers will ignore the request or push back and say, ‘It’s private or confidential information and we don’t want to participate.’ That’s not in the spirit of what we want the conversation to be. The worst possible decision would be not participating. It’s better if they do participate but have a high emissions score, because that opens a conversation.”
