What Comes After Scope 3? From GHG Accounting to Product LCA
Your company has calculated its Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions. Perhaps you are now working on Scope 3. Or you have already completed your first corporate greenhouse gas inventory. Congrats! That is real progress, and it probably was not easy.
You gathered data from across the organisation, chased information from suppliers, made assumptions where perfect data did not exist and turned it all into a corporate carbon footprint. You may also have published the results and set reduction targets.
For a moment, it might have felt as though you finally understood your company’s environmental impact.
Then someone asked a different kind of question:
“What is the environmental footprint of our best-selling product?”
Sales receives a tender asking for an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). R&D wants to know whether replacing a material would genuinely improve a product. Procurement needs to compare suppliers. A circularity team wants to redesign a product but needs evidence that one improvement will not create a larger impact elsewhere.
You have spent months building your company-level emissions data—yet it cannot answer the product-level questions now landing on your desk.
If this feels familiar, our webinar From Scope 1 & 2 to Product LCA was created for you.
When company-level data is no longer enough
You may recognise your organisation in one or more of these situations:
You have calculated Scope 1 and 2, but are unsure what should come next.
You are working on Scope 3, yet still cannot answer questions about individual products.
Customer requests for product carbon footprints, LCAs or EPDs are becoming more frequent—and each one creates a new scramble.
Sustainability needs data from procurement, engineering and operations, but there is no shared process or clear ownership.
R&D wants to compare design alternatives, but your team cannot yet do so confidently.
You outsource individual LCAs, but the knowledge remains outside the company.
You are considering LCA software without knowing which competence, data or internal resources you need first.
You do not know whether to hire an LCA specialist, train your existing team, continue outsourcing or combine these approaches.
The frustrating part is that you have already done significant work. You may have more environmental data than ever before and still feel unprepared when a customer asks about one product.
That does not mean your corporate GHG accounting was done incorrectly. It means the questions have changed.
GHG accounting and product LCA answer different questions
Corporate GHG accounting asks: What are our company’s greenhouse gas emissions?
Product Life Cycle Assessment asks: What environmental impacts does this defined product or service create throughout its life cycle?
Scope 3 can show that purchased materials are a major source of emissions across the company. It does not automatically tell you which product has the largest footprint, which component drives it, whether a material substitution would improve the overall outcome or what evidence is needed for an EPD.
LCA provides that product lens. It can examine raw materials, manufacturing, distribution, use and end of life, as well as environmental impacts beyond climate change where relevant.
The approaches are connected, but product LCA is not simply a more detailed Scope 3 calculation. Moving from one to the other requires new methodological knowledge, product data and collaboration across the organisation.
Want to examine the methodological differences more closely?
| Aspect | Corporate GHG accounting | Product Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) |
|---|---|---|
| Main question | What are our company's greenhouse gas emissions? | What are the environmental impacts of this product throughout its life cycle? |
| Focus | The organisation and its value chain | A defined product or service |
| Scope | Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 | Raw materials, manufacturing, distribution, use and end of life |
| Impacts measured | Global Warming Potential | Global Warming Potential and multiple other relevant environmental impacts, depending on the method. A few examples are freshwater eutrophication, ecotoxicity and depletion of natural resources |
| Typical uses | Corporate reporting, climate targets and emissions reduction | Eco-design, procurement, environmental hotspots, product footprints, sustainability strategy and EPDs |
| Typical result | A company-level greenhouse gas inventory | Product-level impact results and insight into what drives them |
The two approaches are connected, but one is not a more detailed version of the other. Scope 3 may identify purchased goods as a major corporate emissions category. An LCA can then investigate how particular materials and processes contribute to the impact of a particular product.
Why Scope 3 often leaves companies with more questions than answers
Scope 1 and 2 focus mainly on emissions connected to your own operations and purchased energy. Scope 3 takes you beyond the factory gate, to suppliers, raw materials, transport, product use and end of life.
The picture becomes broader, but also messier. More people need to contribute data. Uncertainty increases. Sustainability becomes dependent on procurement, engineering, manufacturing, suppliers and customers.
Scope 3 has taught the organisation to look across the value chain, but it still applies a company-level climate lens. When the questions become product-specific, you need product-level information.
This is the point at which LCA often becomes the natural next step.
Is product LCA the right next step for your company?
When you start considering product LCA, pause and look at what is creating the need for product data. Ask yourself:
Who is requesting the information? Is the asks coming from customers, tenders, regulation, R&D, procurement or your sustainability strategy?
What decision must the data support? Do you need an EPD, a product carbon footprint, a material comparison or insight for eco-design?
Is this an occasional request or a recurring need? One study may be outsourced. Repeated requests may justify building internal capability.
What already exists inside the company? Consider your product data, people, software, supplier relationships and previous studies.
What capability is missing? The answer might be methodological knowledge, better data ownership, software, expert support, or a combination of these.
These questions form the groundwork for your next steps: they help you determine whether you need an LCA, what kind of LCA would answer your questions and what capabilities you need to make it happen.
Ready to build LCA capability?
If product LCA is becoming a recurring need in your organisation, training your existing team can be one way to build that capability while keeping your product knowledge in-house.
Our hands-on LCA training combines LCA methodology with a real company project, giving participants the opportunity to apply what they learn to an actual product and build practical LCA skills with expert guidance.