This study investigates how cross-sector collaborations can mitigate value chain emissions, thereby reducing complex environmental issues. The point of departure is the Energize program, which ten pharmaceutical companies introduced at COP26 in November of 2021. Energize aims to accelerate the adaptation of renewable energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions throughout the industry and its value chain, which refers to Scope 3 emissions. By interviewing 13 respondents from nine participating companies, the study’s objective is to increase the understanding of these collaborative activities through a case study of Energize. Moreover, it investigates and identifies the drivers to encourage collaboration, its constraints, and the factors to make a program productive. The research concludes that for a cross-sector collaboration program to become fruitful, internal factors such as corporate engagement, the importance of industry working groups, and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation are needed to exist throughout the process. Besides, external factors such as social awareness, legal requirements, and technological readiness are essential. Similar programs can efficiently try to solve complex issues by leveraging the combined bargaining power to increase the development within the value chain. Moreover, as a pre-competitive partnership, Energize has attractive benefits in reducing costly implementation processes and improving the resources of the participating actors.

The agricultural industry has an opportunity to shift to a more sustainable practice that helps restore vital topsoil, improve water quality, reduce environmental impact, and sequester atmospheric carbon into the vast soil carbon pool. However, to implement these practices at considerable scale, agricultural producers require access to resources and capital they rarely have and can be difficult to acquire. As a company, investing in regenerative agriculture in supply chains can lead to reduced Scope 3 emissions, more resilient supply chains, and better marketability as an investment fund, an employer, and a brand. Insetting regenerative agriculture can protect supply chains against climate risks and productivity loss, as well as serve as a more secure alternative to carbon credit offsets. Four successful companies, General Mills, Organic Valley, Nestlé, and Nespresso, have been shown to benefit from investing in regenerative agriculture as part of their evolution towards reaching net zero emissions. Based on their strategies, this paper has developed a recommended framework for programming investments for insetting regenerative agriculture. The recommendations rest on six pillars: 1) determining impact, 2) providing direct support to farmers, 3) place-specific strategies, 4) collaboration through partnerships, 5) scalable programming, and 6) educate consumers. Together, these represent a comprehensive approach to insetting that will provide long-term benefits to businesses, suppliers, and the planet.

In context of the forthcoming Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive, this study examines how scope 3 emissions and the reporting thereof affect the cost of debt. Further, it investigates how scope 1 emissions affect the cost of debt and how the two scopes differ in materiality. As a theoretical foundation, this thesis uses previous research on environmental risk management, carbon risk premium, scope 3 emissions and cost of capital. By collecting a sample of 1710 firm-year observations for publicly listed European companies during the period 2019-2022, this quantitative study utilizes fixed effect regression models to find the relationship between scope 3 emission and cost of debt. No evidence of a relationship between scope 3 emissions and cost of debt is found. When looking at scope 1 emissions, the results show that companies with lower scope 1 emissions are rewarded by creditors with a reduced cost of debt. Regarding reporting of scope 3 emissions, we find no evidence suggesting that scope 3 disclosure lowers the cost of debt.

As the world grapples with the increasingly dire effects of climate change, companies are under more pressure than ever before to not just report on their environmental impact, but to actively work towards sustainability. Carbon accounting has emerged as a crucial aspect of this reporting, and the concept of Scope 3 emissions, introduced by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol a decade ago, is now a vital tool for assessing a company's environmental footprint. Focusing on 124 large Swedish companies that are aligned with the Science-based target initiative, this research aims to investigate the methods and data used to assess their Scope 3 emissions. Through a qualitative approach that includes content analysis of published sustainability reports and a comprehensive literature review. The findings of this study are illuminating, revealing a troubling lack of consistency and comparability in the data, methods, and numbers disclosed by the companies. This highlights the need for transparency, comparability, and sector-specific guidelines in sustainability reporting standards. Furthermore, the study calls for further research to evaluate the effectiveness of current Scope 3 data collection tools and explore the potential impact of emerging technologies on reducing emissions across a company's value chain. By shedding light on these crucial issues, this study offers valuable insights for policymakers, academics, and corporate actors alike.

As CO2 emissions increase, so does the average temperature, leading toenvironmental consequences such as rising sea levels, drought, and starvation.Therefore, it is essential to act towards the reduction of the CO2 emissionsto counteract these dire consequences. The Science Based Target initiative(SBTi) which is a non-governmental organization has created a framework fororganisations to set net-zero targets for 2050. The goals are accompanied byguidelines, demands and recommendations for how to measure and reportemissions across a supply chain. There are challenges and problems attached to measuring CO2 emissions formultinational companies (MNC). The emissions are divided into three scopes.Scope 3 which consists of indirect emissions coming from up- anddownstream of the focal companies has proven to be challenging to gatherdata for due to lack of proper company capabilities. This thesis aims toidentify challenges related to measuring and reporting the emissions caused bythe use of sold products, which is one of the 15 categories of Scope 3.Moreover, this study aims to create a standardized framework for MNCs byaddressing the necessary steps for collecting data for developing an emissionscalculation tool and to suggest how to properly calculate and illustrateemissions ty the focal company. Lastly, the implementability of the frameworkwill be assessed. The research methods include a case study with a set of unstructuredinterviews of nine participants. These includes engineers, innovationmanagers, sustainability managers and product managers. Moreover, aniterative process for developing a calculation tool was performed includingtesting of the tool as it was developed. The case study identified challenges of calculating emissions from soldproducts. These were of lack of IT infrastructure, insufficient data forcalculating emissions, high uncertainties of how the organization shouldconduct measuring of emissions and how to allocate resources in the SBTiimplementation. Moreover, the risks of interpreting calculated dataincorrectly were identified. Lastly, a framework was created consisting of aseven-step process including: communicating transition, assembling projectteams, covering emission, mapping data, creating the tool, task delegation andeducation and standardization.