Scope 3
Radical Collaboration
Hubs

We must bring Scope 3 emissions down rapidly to meet global and national GHG targets and avoid catastrophic global warming. Since your Scope 3 emissions are other organizations’ Scope 1 and 2 emissions, Scope 3 is also the biggest lever we have to reduce total GHG emissions.

New regulations will require companies to include Scope 3 emission in their climate reporting, which means your organization will be accountable for GHG emissions across its value chain. Scope 3 emissions are also usually beyond your organization’s direct control as the commercial relationships that define your value chain rarely include explicit GHG considerations.

In fact, commercial arrangements usually create barriers to collaboration and the sharing of information in the name of commercial confidentiality, intellectual property protection and other forms of business risk. Modern day capitalism also dictates that companies perceive one another as competitors, yet when it comes to GHG emissions, competitors usually share common issues and opportunities.

Competition also underpins the so-called ‘First-Mover Disadvantage’ that deters companies from taking the lead in reducing GHG emissions. According to this theory first movers either incur the developments costs of solutions that their competitors then copy, or they incur higher operating costs from being the first to lower their emissions – or both.

Tackling Scope 3 emissions and averting environmental catastrophe requires a new paradigm. Organizations need to start partnering with organizations they don’t normally work with, whom they have no commercial relationship with and may even compete with, but with whom they share common GHG objectives, issues and opportunities. They need to commit to joint GHG goals and treat financial outcomes as constraints rather than the primary objective.

Scope 3 Collaboration Radical Hubs bring organizations together to solve common Scope 3 challenges through an eight-stage process.

The initial membership of the Hub will not include every company in every member’s value chain. The initial scope will therefore often focus on some key supply chains for simplicity, but as traction is gained in measuring, reporting and reducing Scope 3 emissions potential new members will be identified. The process then needs to be repeated as new members join the Hub.

Critically, as an independent party whose only interest in the Hub is in the achievement of its joint and individual objectives, we provide the “backbone” that enables diverse organizations to work together synergistically. Through our role as the Collaboration Integrity Office in each Hub we provide governance, day-to-day management, progress reporting and transparency around individual and collective accountabilities.

We also facilitate and project-manage our proprietary collaborative problem solving and solution development process to not only conceive and develop innovative solutions, but also deliver them. As part of this process and to support progress monitoring, we also provide mechanisms for the confidential aggregation and sharing of data between members.

Radical Collaboration Hubs are built on a common architecture and use pre-defined processes which means they are quick to start and can be rapidly scaled to get better results faster. This also allows different Hubs to work together.