Scope 1, 2 and 3 Emissions
The three categories the GHG Protocol uses to organise a company's emissions: direct emissions from owned or controlled sources (scope 1), purchased energy (scope 2), and everything else across the value chain (scope 3). Scope 3 is usually the largest and the hardest to measure.
Why knowing your emissions scopes matters for carbon credit buyers
Scopes determine what a company is accountable for, and therefore what its carbon credit purchases are meant to address. For most organisations scope 3 dominates the footprint, covering purchased goods, transport, and use of sold products, and it is where reduction is slowest because the emissions sit with suppliers and customers. That gap is why many buyers turn to credits, but under net-zero frameworks credits sit outside the inventory and do not lower a reported scope 1, 2 or 3 figure. Knowing your scope split first makes it far easier to size a credit portfolio and to explain it to auditors and customers.