ESG by ZYT← All answersCarbon accounting
What are Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions?
Scope 1 is what you burn yourself — fuel in your vehicles, gas in your kitchen. Scope 2 is the electricity you buy, burned at someone else’s power station. Scope 3 is everything else that happens because of your business, upstream and downstream: what you buy, how staff commute, how customers use what you sell.
The split exists to stop double counting. If everyone counted all emissions everywhere, the world total would be several times its real size. So each emission has one owner in Scope 1, and everyone else who touches it counts it in Scope 3.
| Scope | The rule of thumb | Typical for a small business |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | You burned it | Cooking gas, generator diesel, company vans, refrigerant leaks |
| 2 | You bought the electricity | Grid electricity, purchased steam or chilled water |
| 3 | Everything else | Purchased goods, water, waste, business travel, commuting |
For most SMEs, Scope 2 is the biggest single line and the easiest to get right, because the electricity bill is already a meter reading. Scope 1 is usually small but simple. Scope 3 is where the work is.
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Last reviewed 2026-09-04