Scope 3 targets among SBTi companies: what it means for suppliers

Why Scope 3 matters to suppliers

Scope 3 covers emissions in a company's value chain, outside its own operations. For a buyer, a supplier's emissions are the buyer's Scope 3. A buyer with a Scope 3 target can only report progress with data from suppliers. Reporting standards and customer questionnaires then pass that request down the chain.

In chemicals, SBTi reports that Scope 3 is nearly 77% of sector emissions, citing CDP 2022 data.⁴ Where most emissions sit in the value chain, the supplier request becomes unavoidable.

Data and method

The analysis uses two files published on the SBTi Target Dashboard, dated 1 October 2026: a company file (15,739 companies) and a target file (about 40,900 target rows).³ All figures are counts of companies in these files. TCB aggregated them by region, country, organisation type and sector, and the explorer further down recalculates every share from that aggregated table.

The definitions decide the numbers, so they come first:

• Validated: near term status is "Validated Targets". Companies that only committed, or whose commitment was removed, are excluded from the validated counts.
• Corporate, SME: SBTi organisation type. Financial institutions are a separate type and are excluded from the corporate counts.
• Europe: SBTi regions Northern, Western, Southern and Eastern Europe. This includes the UK, Switzerland and Norway, and is wider than the EU.
• Scope 3 target: any near term target row whose scope includes Scope 3.
• Supplier engagement target: a target of type Engagement whose wording mentions suppliers. This is a TCB text match, not an SBTi field.
• Sector groups are TCB groupings of SBTi sectors. Chemicals. Manufacturing and materials (electrical equipment and machinery, automobiles, containers and packaging, building products, construction materials, aerospace and defense, tires). Transport and logistics (ground transportation, air freight, water transportation, air transportation). Core logistics excludes air transportation.

1. Europe holds almost half of validated companies

5,723 of 12,092 validated companies are in Europe (47%). Of all 15,739 companies on the dashboard, 7,597 are in Europe (48%). For validated net zero targets the European share is 63% (1,796 of 2,831), which is a different base from the 47%.³

2. Market capitalisation

SBTi's Monitoring Report 2023 states that companies with science based targets or commitments represented 60% of European market capitalisation (USD 12.55 trillion of USD 20.76 trillion) at the end of 2023.¹ The same report puts the global equivalent at 39%. SBTi's January 2026 announcement adds that its 10,000 validated companies represent more than 40% of global market capitalisation.²

TCB did not calculate market capitalisation itself. SBTi uses paid LSEG Datastream data matched by name, ISIN and LEI, which cannot be replicated from free sources. For scale, the World Federation of Exchanges reports global equity market capitalisation of USD 151.94 trillion at the end of 2025.⁵

3. Scope 3 targets by sector group

Chemicals and manufacturing combined in Europe: 506 of 517 corporates have a Scope 3 target (98%). Transport and logistics in Europe: 149 of 159 (94%). Core logistics only: 130 of 140 (93%). Shares are high everywhere because SBTi criteria require a Scope 3 target when Scope 3 is 40% or more of total emissions.⁶

4. Sector detail, Europe

Sectors with fewer than 30 validated European corporates carry a small base. Quote them with the count, not the percentage alone.

5. Supplier engagement

Across Europe, 451 of 2,845 corporates (16%) have a supplier engagement target. In chemicals the share is 9% (6 of 67), in manufacturing and materials 9% (39 of 450), in transport and logistics 19% (30 of 159).³ These are the customers that have gone one step beyond a Scope 3 target and committed to getting a share of their suppliers to set science based targets of their own.

6. SMEs

6,655 SMEs have validated targets and 69 (1%) have a Scope 3 target. The SME streamlined route requires measuring Scope 3 only.⁶ Suppliers are mostly SMEs, so this is the gap between what large customers need and what their suppliers have set up.

Explore the data

The dashboard holds the same aggregated table TCB used for this article. Choose a place, a company type and a sector group. Each tile shows the count, the base and the share, so the calculation behind every figure is visible.

Limitations

• Self selected population. Companies on the dashboard chose to engage with SBTi. The shares do not describe all companies.
• Europe is not the EU. It includes the UK, Switzerland and Norway.
• No supplier geography. The dashboard lists where a company is headquartered. It says nothing about where its suppliers are.
• The 60% market capitalisation figure dates from the end of 2023 and counts companies with targets or commitments.
• Supplier engagement counts rely on a text match and may miss targets worded differently.
• Sector groups are TCB choices. The definitions above list the mapping.

Sources

1. SBTi Monitoring Report 2023: report (PDF), global geographic growth, data sources and methodology.
2. SBTi, 10,000 companies with validated targets (22 Jan 2026).
3. SBTi Target Dashboard, company and target files dated 1 Oct 2026, TCB analysis.
4. SBTi, Science Based Targets in the Chemicals Sector: Status Report (Jan 2023).
5. World Federation of Exchanges, public markets in 2025.
6. SBTi Criteria v5.3.1 (April 2026); SBTi blog, Scope 3: stepping up science based action.