Scope 3 Value-Chain Data: A Pathway to Climate Finance for African Suppliers

Scope 3 emissions often account for the largest share of a company's greenhouse gas footprint. Yet companies frequently lack the primary data, consistent accounting methods and assurance systems needed to demonstrate reductions across complex value chains.

Verra's Scope 3 Standard (S3S) Program¹ is designed to address this gap. It provides a framework for quantifying greenhouse gas reductions and removals from value-chain projects, tracking the resulting Scope 3 Units and, in a later phase, connecting those outcomes to companies that can demonstrate a credible supply-chain relationship. The program could help direct corporate climate investment towards suppliers and producers whose actions generate measurable emissions benefits.

An Opportunity for Africa's Most Critical Supply Chains

Africa's agricultural, extractive, manufacturing and logistics sectors connect local producers to domestic and international buyers. These relationships create potential channels for financing lower-emission production.

Under the S3S Program, a qualified project may be developed by the originator of an affected product, a reporting company, a specialist project developer, a financial institution or another eligible entity. For African smallholders, this could support investment in improved soil management, intercropping, reduced tillage and more efficient fertilizer use. For concrete manufacturers, it could support technologies that use captured carbon dioxide and reduce Portland cement requirements.

The program by itself does not provide finance. Its value lies in creating a credible accounting and registry framework that can support corporate investment, supplier programs, results-based payments and longer-term procurement arrangements.

Reverse logistics is also relevant to Africa's transition. Better systems for recovering packaging, industrial materials and post-consumer products can improve value-chain data and reduce waste-related emissions. However, the initial S3S release supports only adaptations of VM0042² for improved agricultural land management and VM0043 for carbon dioxide use in concrete. VM0043³ also excludes recycled concrete in the baseline and project scenarios. Reverse-logistics and general mining projects will therefore require an applicable S3S methodology before they can be registered under the program.

Program Phasing and Independent Assurance

The S3S Program is being introduced in stages. The initial release of Version 1 allows eligible projects using S3S-VM0042 or S3S-VM0043 to be listed in the project pipeline through the Verra Project Hub and Verra Registry. A pipeline listing identifies a proposed project, but it is not evidence that the project or its greenhouse gas outcomes have been independently verified.

Verra states that later updates to Version 1 will introduce validation, registration, verification and the issuance of Scope 3 Units to project proponents. These activities will involve independent validation and verification bodies approved under the program.

Version 2 will add the right-to-report process. A company will need to demonstrate a verified value-chain association with the product affected by the project before it can receive reportable Scope 3 Units based on an approved allocation method. Independent assurance is therefore expected to begin through later Version 1 updates, while Version 2 will extend assurance to the corporate value-chain connection and allocation of reportable units⁴.

How S3S Accounting Works

The S3S framework separates project quantification from the way results are attributed, allocated and integrated into corporate reporting.

Attribution assigns greenhouse gas project information among the impacted products produced during a monitoring period. Where a project produces more than one product, the project proponent uses a justified physical or economic metric, such as mass, energy content, production volume or economic value.

Allocationcarries the greenhouse gas information through parent-child relationships in the value chain, for example from a farm product to a processed food product. Where possible, the allocation method should be consistent with the method used in the company's existing emission factor.

The reporting company may then use one of two integration approaches:

For S3S-VM0043, an African concrete producer could quantify captured carbon dioxide mineralized in concrete and reductions in cement use while demonstrating equivalent product performance. Product and mix-design data may support substitution where they can replace the relevant components of the purchaser's generic concrete emission factor.

For S3S-VM0042, smallholders could implement practices such as intercropping, reduced tillage, residue management and improved fertilizer application. The resulting reductions or soil-carbon removals may be attributed to the affected crop output. Subtraction may be more practical where field-level project boundaries do not align fully with a buyer's generic agricultural emission factor.

These are likely applications rather than mandatory methodology pairings. Either integration method may be appropriate if its data, boundaries and assumptions satisfy the program rules⁵.

Registry and Digital Infrastructure

The Verra Registry is intended to provide a central record of listed and registered projects, unit issuance, serial numbers and unit attributes. It will also help maintain project uniqueness and track the status of Scope 3 Units.

The program permits certain forms of co-claiming by companies at different tiers of the same value chain, subject to allocation limits and safeguards against over-issuance. Although a project may meet the requirements for both the S3S and Verified Carbon Standard programs, it cannot issue units from both programs for the same active period.

S3S is also designed as a digital-first program. Project information, methodology calculations, reviews and registry processes will be routed through the Verra Project Hub and Registry.