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As net-zero policies continue to gain momentum around the world, corporate carbon management is rapidly evolving from emissions tracking within production facilities to governance across the value chain. This shift is also fostering the development of an ecosystem of net-zero technology services that integrates carbon accounting, data, consulting, and decarbonization solutions to address carbon management needs spanning multiple organizations and diverse data sources. According to research by the World Economic Forum (WEF), approximately 70% of a company's total carbon footprint originates not from its own factories or offices, but from indirect emissions generated throughout its upstream and downstream supply chains, employee commuting, and product use phases. As a result, Scope 3 emissions have become the most critical and the most challenging aspect of corporate decarbonization efforts. 

Scope 3 falls outside Scope 1 (direct emissions) and Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased energy) and refers to all other indirect carbon emissions occurring across a company's value chain, including upstream activities such as supplier production, raw material transportation, and outsourced manufacturing, as well as downstream activities such as product use, disposal, and recycling. Scope 3 has become the central challenge of corporate decarbonization because its emission sources are highly dispersed, spanning multiple organizations and geographic regions. As a result, companies have a limited ability to measure, monitor, and control their actual emissions. 

Moreover, supply chain data often varies significantly in quality, is costly to obtain, and is collected by companies using inconsistent criteria. Even with carbon accounting systems or digital management tools in place, efforts often stall at the data aggregation stage, and it is difficult to translate this information into actionable decarbonization measures.

In practice, companies face a prevalent and fundamental problem: how to determine decarbonization priorities when data is incomplete. Traditionally, companies wait to analyze data until datasets are complete. However, this "completeness first, action later" model can delay critical transformation efforts. Therefore, the decision-making paradigm for decarbonization is gradually shifting away from a data-centric approach towards behavioral change and practical feasibility. 

Drawing on international policy and behavioral evidence, research by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that behavioral change could contribute approximately 11% toward the global net-zero pathway by 2050. This finding underscores that decarbonization depends not only on technology and equipment upgrades, but also to a significant extent on behavioral choices and institutional design. Germany's 9-Euro-Ticket initiative provides a notable example: public transportation usage increased significantly during the subsidy period; however, ridership declined rapidly after the program ended. This indicates that governments would be hard pressed to create long-term structural change by launching a standalone policy incentive. 

To address this conundrum, the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) has developed a Scope 3 Decarbonization Strategy Decision Framework to help companies prioritize decarbonization strategies at different stages of data maturity. This framework focuses on altering operational emissions through behavioral design. It enables companies, even when initial data is incomplete, to use a four-quadrant assessment as a starting point to analyze the two key dimensions: data readiness and behavioral feasibility. Furthermore, the proposed framework introduces a scoring mechanism that enables companies to assign scores to the behavioral feasibility of each strategy, where strategies receiving higher scores are considered to have greater potential for implementation. Even when data completeness remains limited, these strategies can be prioritized for early action, allowing decarbonization initiatives to proceed without delay.  

As more data becomes available, companies can deploy a tiered and weighted evaluation model to strengthen quantitative analysis by building on the most feasible initiatives. By incorporating estimates of anticipated emissions reductions and behavioral adoption rates, decision-makers can better balance environmental impacts with practical implementation.

The focus of this approach is not on identifying the strategy with the greatest immediate emissions reduction. Rather, it is about finding a starting point for action. As data and practical experience accumulate, strategic directions are dynamically adjusted to help companies gradually establish a decarbonization pathway for continued progress.  

At its core, Scope 3 decarbonization is a coordinated process implemented throughout the entire supply chain ecosystem. A company's decisions not only affect its own emissions but also further change the behavior patterns of partners upstream and downstream. By incorporating behavioral design principles at key leverage points, it is possible to create decarbonization effects that cascade and amplify through the supply chain over time. 

Companies facing Scope 3 challenges need not wait until all data is complete before taking action. Instead, they should first identify which stakeholders, processes, and decision points are most amenable to change. By transitioning from simple emissions accounting to behavioral design, and by integrating resources across the industry ecosystem, companies are better positioned to plot a clear path forward amid uncertainty, driving the transformation from actionable to sustainable.