The following has been produced by AFRY, Combient Pure's partner in organizing the 2026 Scope 3 Decarbonization Accelerator. Join us for the first event of the 2026 Accelerator, the Scope 3 Energy Transition Summit, in Stockholm on April 20-21, 2026 (open only to Combient Associated Companies). The Summit will bring together experts and company cases to explore how Combient Associated Companies can meaningfully reduce value chain emissions linked to energy use, both upstream with suppliers and downstream with customers.
Why is energy a critical component in decarbonizing Scope 3 emissions?
Energy is one of the defining challenges and opportunities in Scope 3 decarbonization. Insights from Combient’s 2025 State of Value Chain Decarbonization Survey show that Category 1: Purchased goods and services is one of the notable Scope 3 emission sources, and subsequently an area where companies have faced challenges in their emission reduction efforts. The survey further indicates that new ways are needed to collaborate with suppliers to enable their decarbonization.
For manufacturing companies, energy-related emissions represent a substantial portion of their overall Scope 3 footprint. Day 1 of the Scope 3 Energy Transition Summit will therefore center around decarbonizing the energy emissions from suppliers in the upstream value chain. AFRY’s thought leadership will have two focus angles, enabling procurement of renewable energy and supplier governance and engagement, with the ambition of breaking barriers related to the challenges suppliers face in decarbonization.
Renewable energy as the key enabler
Procurement of renewable energy is a critical component to Scope 3 decarbonization since it produces little to no greenhouse gas emissions, directly replacing the high-emitting electricity generation from fossil fuels. Expanding renewable energy use, especially across hard-to-abate industries, can significantly cut the embedded carbon in materials and components that flow through value chains. As companies increasingly rely on low carbon suppliers to meet net zero targets, renewable energy procurement becomes a strategic lever for meaningful Scope 3 decarbonization in the upstream value chain.
The global energy transition is accelerating with clean power dominating new growth. In 2024, renewable energy accounted for more than 90% of all new electricity capacity worldwide driven largely by the rapid expansions in solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal power. However, geopolitical turmoil, volatile markets, and an increase in electricity demand pose significant threats to the transition.
Even though renewable energy generation is expanding, there are several structural barriers in decarbonizing emissions from suppliers’ energy use. Suppliers often operate in regions where fossil fuels are still the dominating source of energy supply. Emerging markets face further constraints in grid infrastructure and availability of renewable alternatives which impacts suppliers’ ability to decarbonize. Furthermore, unlike for Scope 1 and 2 emissions, companies have limited control or influence over how their suppliers source electricity.
Enabling suppliers to transition to renewable energy is therefore not only a question of ambition, but of market structure and risk allocation. Many suppliers face credit constraints, or limited ability to absorb long-term price and volume exposure from renewable contracts. As a result, Scope 3 decarbonization becomes closely linked to how energy market risks are shared between buyers, suppliers, and generators. At the Summit, we will explore such structural barriers and discuss practical, commercially grounded approaches to unlocking supplier renewable uptake.
The role of supplier governance
Governance is central to decarbonization, determining whether climate ambition is translated into effective decision-making and timely action. It sets accountability and assurance structures, aligns incentives, and ensures that the balance of cost, resilience, and emissions is understood and enacted at the right level of the organization. In the context of upstream Scope 3 emissions, governance needs to extend beyond internal operations and structure, into procurement strategy, supplier engagement, contract design, and capital allocation. Without this integration, climate targets risk remaining aspirational rather than embedded in how businesses actually buy, negotiate, and compete.
Today, upstream emissions are still largely handled through compliance-led approaches, with high-level contract clauses, supplier surveys, disclosure platforms, and audits used to gather data and signal expectations. While necessary, these mechanisms can trap organizations in measurement cycles, focusing on reporting coverage rather than reducing emissions in known hotspots. The shift now required is from one-way oversight to operational collaboration.
Governance of Scope 3 is inherently challenged by companies’ lack of direct control when it comes to supplier emissions. Yet this is not an insurmountable barrier, but a call to collaborate differently; suppliers vary widely in capability and ambition, but with coordinated demand signals, clearer long-term commitments, and a willingness to address pricing and investment realities, they can become sites of an organization’s quickest and most material decarbonization gains. Collective action, co-innovation, and targeted incentives can help overcome power imbalances and unlock emissions reductions that would not occur through status quo monitoring alone.
At the Summit, we will explore how organizations can move beyond relying on authority alone and instead deliberately exercise influence to support suppliers in navigating imperfect data, capital constraints, and competing priorities. We will examine practical examples of supplier governance shifting from monitoring to enabling, including prioritizing high-impact suppliers, using longer-term contracts to unlock investment, coordinating joint demand signals, and deploying financial, technical, and social support mechanisms. These insights are aimed at strengthening and evolving your governance models so that they can deliver the scale and pace of Scope 3 reductions now required.
Photo by Cemrecan Yurtman on Unsplash