Published October 19, 2026
Scope 1, 2 and 3 for small businesses
Scope 1, 2 and 3 are three ways of dividing a company's greenhouse gas emissions by where they occur. The division comes from the GHG Protocol (Greenhouse Gas Protocol), the standard almost every climate calculation is based on, including the EU's voluntary standard VS (formerly VSME).
The short version: scope 1 is what you burn yourself, scope 2 is the energy you buy and scope 3 is everything else in the value chain.
The three scopes
| Scope | What it is | Typical examples for a small company |
|---|---|---|
| Scope 1 | Direct emissions from sources the company owns or controls | Diesel and petrol in owned or leased vehicles, oil or gas in your own boiler |
| Scope 2 | Indirect emissions from purchased energy | Electricity, district heating, district cooling and steam |
| Scope 3 | Other indirect emissions in the value chain, before and after your own operations | Purchased goods and services, transport carried out by others, business travel, waste |
A rule of thumb: if the chimney or exhaust pipe is yours, it is scope 1. If the emissions occur at a power or heating plant producing energy for you, it is scope 2. If they occur at a supplier, a customer or anyone else in the chain, it is scope 3.
What does VS require?
In the basic module (disclosure B3), the company reports its estimated gross emissions in tonnes of CO2 equivalent:
- Scope 1, emissions from owned or controlled sources.
- Scope 2, location-based, meaning emissions from producing the energy you buy, calculated with an average for the grid where you consume it.
The company also reports its GHG intensity: gross emissions divided by turnover.
Scope 3 is not required in the basic module. A company that chooses to report scope 3 starts from the GHG Protocol's 15 categories and includes the categories that are significant for it. In practice, many larger customers ask for scope 3 data, and in VS scope 3 is among the data a customer may require when the emissions are significant.
For companies with ten employees or fewer, B3 is voluntary. If a customer asks anyway, it is usually scope 1 and 2 you need to answer.
Scope 2: location-based and market-based
Scope 2 can be calculated in two ways:
- Location-based uses average emissions for electricity in the country or grid where it is consumed. This is the figure VS requires.
- Market-based starts from the company's contracts, such as electricity with guarantees of origin. If the company has no such contracts, a so-called residual mix is used, which often gives a higher figure than the location-based one.
The market-based figure may be reported as voluntary additional information and should then be labelled as such. It helps to explain the difference in the report: if you have bought renewable electricity with guarantees of origin but report location-based emissions, a reader might otherwise think the report contradicts itself.
Scope 3: the categories that usually matter
The GHG Protocol divides scope 3 into 15 categories, eight upstream and seven downstream. For a small company, usually only a few matter:
| Category | Content |
|---|---|
| 1. Purchased goods and services | Emissions from making what you buy |
| 3. Fuel- and energy-related activities | Extraction, production and transport of the fuel and electricity you use |
| 4. Upstream transportation | Transport of purchased goods that you pay for but someone else drives |
| 5. Waste | Treatment of the waste from your operations |
| 6. Business travel | Flights, trains, rental cars and hotels |
| 7. Employee commuting | Employees' travel to and from work |
Category 1 is often the largest, and also the hardest to calculate. A common first step is to calculate per amount spent, with default values per type of purchase. That gives a rough but useful picture, which can then be refined with data from the most important suppliers, such as weight and material.
From bookkeeping to emissions
The calculation is basically the same for every scope:
quantity × emission factor = emissions
The quantity is, for example, litres of diesel or kilowatt-hours of electricity. The emission factor states how much greenhouse gas each unit gives rise to, and is taken from a published source, for example published factors for Swedish fuels or an official figure for the electricity mix.
An example for a workshop with two service vans:
| Item | Source data | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Diesel for the vans | Invoices from the fuel company, in litres | 1 |
| Electricity for the premises | Electricity invoices, in kWh | 2 |
| District heating | Invoices from the heating company, in kWh | 2 |
| Spare parts and materials | Supplier invoices, in money | 3, category 1 |
| Train trips to a trade fair | Receipts, in money or km | 3, category 6 |
So much of the data is already in the bookkeeping. What is usually missing is the quantity: an invoice always shows the amount but not always the number of litres or kilowatt-hours. Look for the quantity on the invoice first, and convert from money only when it is missing. In that case, say that the figure is an estimate.
Common mistakes
- The same energy counted twice. If you produce your own heat or electricity from fuel, count only the fuel, not the energy it produces.
- Wrong scope for leased vehicles. Under operational control, which many small companies use, vehicles you lease and use yourself belong in scope 1, not scope 3.
- Biogenic CO2 in the total. Under the GHG Protocol, CO2 from biofuels such as HVO is reported separately, outside the scopes, as its own line below the table.
- Zero instead of "data not available". If you have no data for an item, say so. A zero means there are no emissions.
- No source for the factors. State which emission factors you used, from which source and which year.
Washproof reads the bookkeeping from Fortnox or an SIE file, calculates scope 1 and 2 and estimates the most common scope 3 categories from supplier invoices. Every figure shows which invoice and which emission factor it is based on.
Sources
- Greenhouse Gas Protocol, A Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard (Corporate Standard), and Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard.
- Commission Recommendation (EU) 2025/1710 of 30 July 2025 on a voluntary sustainability reporting standard for small and medium-sized undertakings, OJ L 2025/1710.
- Commission Delegated Regulation C(2026) 5011 of 3 July 2026 (Voluntary Standard).