Scope3MarketMomentum:frommeasuringpurchasestocuttingemissions

Only 7 in 100 UK companies whose SECR report shows scope 1 and 2 disclose a scope 3 category beyond business travel. Yet 37% of UK medium-sized businesses were asked for carbon data by customers or in tenders in the past year. What you sell is part of your customers’ scope 3, and part of the data they will ask you for.

Scope 3 Market Momentum is Dcycle’s analysis of 15,739 companies in the SBTi Target Dashboard, read alongside official UK sources: the government’s SECR evaluation and the British Business Bank. With a real customer case, it sets out a four-step staircase: from calculating your purchases by spend to setting a reduction target and tracking it.

What you’ll find in the report

• Six figures on how scope 3 is moving worldwide and in the UK, with SBTi data to 1 October 2026.
• A five-question self-assessment to see which step each purchase is on: spend, physical quantity, supplier data or reduction.
• Six checks before calculating by spend (VAT, currencies, inflation, returns) and eight before applying a supplier’s data.
• Which target applies to you: SECR, the SBTi SME route, SBTi for large companies, a customer request or a Carbon Reduction Plan for central government and NHS contracts.
• The real case of an aquaculture company with its main purchase on supplier data and the rest calculated by spend.
• Six AI prompts for the mechanical work, an email template to request data from suppliers and a one-page reduction plan.

Why your customers will ask for it

More than 12,000 companies have SBTi-validated targets, and 97.5% of validated large companies include scope 3. Those targets are getting tougher: the median reduction has moved from 25% over 12-13 years to 33% over 9-10. When a customer sets a scope 3 target, it asks for your emissions data or for a target of your own.

The UK is second only to Japan in the SBTi, with 1,564 validated organisations, but fewer validate a first target each year: 397 in 2024, 353 in 2025 and around 300 projected for 2026. Of the 662 large UK companies validated, 96.7% include scope 3.

Start with what you already have

Twelve months of purchase data is enough for a spend-based baseline and a shortlist of priority purchases, without asking anyone for anything. Then you improve the data only where you plan to act: kilos to change material or quantity, supplier data to change supplier. In Dcycle, every purchase shows its method and every factor its evidence, and Leia takes care of the mechanical work. Book a demo and we’ll walk through your case.