Net-zero commitments are becoming increasingly common across industries. Yet for many companies, the largest share of emissions does not come from their own factories, offices or purchased electricity. It sits outside their direct operational boundaries — embedded in purchased materials and components, logistics, production processes, product use and increasingly complex global value chains.
This is where Scope 3 becomes both one of the greatest challenges and perhaps one of the greatest opportunities for corporate climate action.
The issue is particularly relevant as the world moves towards COP31 in Antalya. Under its Action Agenda, the COP31 Presidency has identified ten priority themes, including Green Industrialization. This priority reflects a fundamental reality: climate goals cannot be achieved if production, trade and employment remain outside the transition. Green industrialization therefore sits at the intersection of decarbonization, competitiveness, investment and economic development.
For industrial companies, this intersection is particularly visible in Scope 3.
A manufacturer may improve energy efficiency in its own facilities, procure renewable electricity and reduce direct emissions, while a significant share of its total carbon footprint remains embedded in the materials, components and services it purchases. Steel, aluminium, batteries, chemicals, electronics and countless other inputs carry emissions long before they reach the final manufacturer.
The conclusion is increasingly difficult to avoid: net zero cannot be achieved company by company. It must be achieved value chain by value chain.
But if this is true, a more difficult question follows:
Who will actually enable and finance the transformation of those value chains?
Scope 3 Is Not Only a Data Challenge
Much of today’s Scope 3 discussion focuses on measurement — and understandably so.
Calculating value-chain emissions is difficult. Companies often rely on spend-based estimates, secondary emission factors and industry averages because supplier-specific primary data is unavailable, inconsistent or difficult to verify. Moving towards better primary data is therefore essential for understanding emissions hotspots and tracking real progress.
But better measurement alone will not decarbonize a supply chain.
Today, suppliers are increasingly asked to complete sustainability questionnaires, disclose greenhouse gas inventories, report renewable energy consumption, provide product carbon footprint data or demonstrate progress against climate targets. These requests can improve transparency and help large companies identify priority areas for action.
Yet sending a questionnaire is not decarbonization.
Requesting data does not automatically create the technical capability to reduce emissions. Asking a supplier to set a target does not provide access to renewable energy. Requiring a product carbon footprint does not create the expertise or digital infrastructure needed to calculate one. Demanding year-on-year emissions reductions does not solve the financing challenge behind low-carbon technologies.
This distinction matters, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises.
From Supplier Engagement to Supplier Enablement
Large companies often have dedicated sustainability teams, access to consultants, digital reporting platforms and stronger financing capacity. Many suppliers — particularly SMEs operating deeper in the value chain — work under very different conditions.
For them, climate transition may require new expertise, emissions measurement systems, energy-efficiency investments, renewable electricity procurement, process redesign, digital infrastructure or significant capital expenditure. At the same time, suppliers may receive different sustainability requests from multiple customers, each using different questionnaires, methodologies and reporting expectations.
This creates a fundamental question for corporate Scope 3 strategies:
Are companies merely transferring climate expectations down the supply chain, or are they actually enabling suppliers to transform?
A credible supplier decarbonization strategy should go beyond annual data collection. It should begin with segmentation: identifying which suppliers, materials and processes represent the most significant emissions hotspots, and assessing where intervention could generate the greatest impact.
Not every supplier carries the same climate relevance. And not every supplier requires the same type of support.
For one supplier, the priority may be establishing a basic greenhouse gas inventory. For another, it may be accessing renewable electricity. A third may need to replace inefficient equipment, redesign a production process, develop product-level carbon data or invest in a new low-carbon technology.
This means supplier decarbonization cannot be managed through a single questionnaire or a uniform target.
It requires a transition architecture.
Why This Matters for Türkiye’s Green Industrialization Agenda
For Türkiye, Scope 3 decarbonization is not only a corporate sustainability issue. It is increasingly a question of industrial competitiveness.
Türkiye is deeply integrated into European and global value chains, particularly across automotive, steel, aluminium, textiles, machinery, chemicals and other manufacturing sectors. As international customers strengthen climate expectations and European regulatory frameworks continue to reshape market requirements, Turkish suppliers are increasingly being asked to demonstrate not only cost, quality and delivery performance, but also carbon performance.
This is precisely why the COP31 priority theme of Green Industrialization matters for Türkiye.
Green industrialization cannot be limited to the decarbonization of a small number of large industrial facilities. If the transition is to generate lasting results across production, trade and employment, it must also reach the thousands of suppliers that form the backbone of industrial value chains.
This is where Scope 3 can become an implementation framework for green industrialization.
Corporate Scope 3 inventories identify where emissions sit across the value chain. Hotspot analyses can reveal which materials, suppliers and production processes carry the greatest carbon impact. Supplier segmentation can help distinguish where the primary challenge is data, technology, energy, capacity or finance.
In other words, Scope 3 analysis can help answer a critical green industrialization question:
Where does transformation need to happen first?
Türkiye Already Has Many of the Building Blocks
Türkiye already has a growing ecosystem of public programmes that can support companies at different stages of green transformation.
The Ministry of Trade’s Responsible® Program, implemented under the Green Deal Compliance Project Support framework, supports companies in assessing sustainability maturity, developing transformation roadmaps and accessing relevant consultancy services.
The Ministry of Industry and Technology’s Green Transformation Program provides an important framework for industrial investments aligned with green transition objectives.
TÜBİTAK’s 1832 Green Transformation in Industry Call supports technology- and innovation-oriented projects aimed at improving the environmental performance of industrial production.
KOSGEB programmes can contribute to the green transition capacity of SMEs, while regional development agencies provide locally tailored support, technical assistance and capacity-building mechanisms. Exporters’ associations and sectoral organisations also play an increasingly important role through awareness programmes, technical guidance, sector-specific projects and green transformation initiatives.
These mechanisms matter.
Türkiye Does Not Lack Programmes. It Lacks Stronger Connections Between Them.
Türkiye’s industrial climate architecture already includes corporate Scope 3 strategies, public green transformation programmes and an expanding sustainable finance ecosystem. Yet between these systems sit thousands of suppliers expected to translate climate ambition into operational investment.
The challenge is therefore not simply the absence of support, but coordination.
A supplier may need more efficient equipment, renewable electricity, stronger emissions data systems or access to low-carbon technologies. A large customer may understand the value-chain impact, a public programme may support the investment, and a financial institution may provide green finance. Yet these actors do not always operate within the same transition architecture.
Building stronger connections between them would directly support COP31’s Green Industrialization priority, where industrial decarbonization requires closer alignment between public policy, private-sector transition needs, technology and finance.
The National Green Finance Strategy as a Critical Missing Link
The publication of Türkiye’s National Green Finance Strategy and Action Plan 2026–2029 adds an important dimension to this discussion. Rather than another standalone green programme, the Strategy could help strengthen the financial architecture connecting real-economy transition needs with capital, sustainability data and financial decision-making.
This is particularly relevant for Scope 3 decarbonization and COP31’s Green Industrialization agenda. The COP31 Action Agenda recognizes finance, technology and capacity building as horizontal enablers — a critical point for industrial transformation, where identifying an emissions hotspot is only the beginning. Companies must also access the expertise, technologies and financial resources required to address it.
Consider a large industrial company that identifies a high-emitting supplier through its Scope 3 analysis. The supplier may face different barriers: limited emissions data, insufficient product carbon footprint capabilities, inefficient equipment, restricted access to renewable energy or difficulty financing low-carbon investment. Each requires a different response, from transition roadmaps and technical assistance to R&D support, industrial investment and green finance.
Türkiye already has many of these building blocks. What is still missing is a more systematic pathway connecting them.
A more integrated model could begin with corporate Scope 3 hotspot analysis and supplier segmentation based on carbon impact and transition readiness. Supplier-specific needs could then be matched with appropriate public support and financing mechanisms:
Corporate Scope 3 hotspot → Supplier segmentation → Transition need → Public support mecha
nism → Green finance → Measured emissions reduction
Such a model would reposition large companies as orchestrators of value-chain transition, help public programmes target material industrial decarbonization needs, and enable financial institutions to direct capital towards credible supplier transition pathways.
In this context, Türkiye’s National Green Finance Strategy could play a catalytic role — not by replacing Responsible®, the Green Transformation Program, TÜBİTAK instruments, KOSGEB support or regional initiatives, but by helping create the financial and information architecture that allows these mechanisms to work more coherently.
The Overlap Between Scope 3 and Financed Emissions
There is another important dimension to this discussion.
The same supplier can simultaneously sit within the Scope 3 inventory of a large industrial buyer and within the financed emissions portfolio of a bank.
Yet these two perspectives are rarely connected.
For the industrial company, the supplier represents a value-chain emissions hotspot.
For the financial institution, the same company may represent a financed emissions exposure and, increasingly, a transition risk or opportunity.
This overlap creates significant potential.
If a supplier has been identified as a material emissions hotspot by a major customer, has developed a credible transition roadmap and is eligible for public green transformation support, financial institutions may be able to assess that transition pathway more effectively.
Corporate demand can provide market visibility.
Public support can reduce technical or investment barriers.
Green finance can enable implementation.
And improved emissions data can help measure whether the transition is actually delivering results.
This is where Scope 3 decarbonization and green finance begin to reinforce each other — and where the Green Industrialization agenda can move from high-level ambition to investable industrial transformation.
From COP31 Priority to Industrial Implementation
COP31’s inclusion of Green Industrialization among its ten priority themes sends an important signal: climate ambition must translate into real transformation across production, trade and investment.
Türkiye does not need to start from zero. The building blocks already exist — corporate Scope 3 strategies, supplier engagement programmes, Responsible®, industrial green transformation incentives, technology and innovation support, SME-focused mechanisms, regional initiatives and an emerging national green finance architecture.
The next step is integration.
A more systematic model could use Scope 3 hotspot analysis to identify where transformation is most urgent, segment suppliers by emissions impact and transition readiness, match their needs with public support mechanisms, and mobilize green finance for implementation at scale.
Such an approach would directly support COP31’s Green Industrialization agenda by connecting corporate climate targets with SME transformation, public incentives with material value-chain emissions, and green finance with measurable transition needs.
The next phase of climate action will not be defined only by who sets the most ambitious targets, but by who builds the systems that enable entire value chains to transform.
Net zero will not be achieved by company. It will be achieved value chain by value chain.
