Scope 3.2 - Capital Goods

Why Scope 3.2 “Capital Goods” Matters

When calculating your organization’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, Scope 3.2: “Capital goods” often carries significant weight—especially for companies investing in new equipment, buildings, or infrastructure.

This category covers the emissions from producing and delivering all long-lasting goods you purchase, such as machinery, IT systems, vehicles, and office buildings.

Understanding Scope 3.2 helps you recognize the hidden climate impact behind your major investments. By integrating sustainability into procurement decisions, you can encourage innovative, low-carbon solutions from suppliers and make your capital investments a powerful tool for climate action.

What’s Included in Scope 3.2?

All capital goods your business buys: equipment, machinery, vehicles, buildings, IT hardware, and other long-lived assets.
“Cradle-to-gate” lifecycle emissions of each capital good, covering extraction of raw materials, manufacturing, and delivery to you—excluding anything you build or manufacture yourself.

Key Principle: If you’re buying a physical asset with a useful life longer than one year (and you didn’t build it yourself), it belongs in Scope 3.2.

Typical data points:

What did you purchase, and how much/many? (e.g., number of machines, square meters of office space)
Value, weight, or units (based on how your supplier reports)

Understanding Data Quality in Scope 3.2 — and Why Continuous Improvement Matters

As with Scope 3.1, data quality in Scope 3.2 determines how meaningful and actionable your inventory results truly are. There are three main quality levels:

Spend-based: You multiply the amount spent on capital goods by a generic emission factor (e.g., “office building per $ spent—global average”). This gets you started quickly when detail is lacking, but is the least precise.
Average-based: You use data on the type and quantity of capital goods (e.g., square meters of building, number of servers) and average emission factors for those categories. This improves accuracy and helps with internal benchmarking over time.
Supplier/Product-Specific: The best scenario! You get asset-specific data from your supplier—such as an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) or lifecycle assessment for a machine or building—giving you precise, action-driving results.

It’s absolutely fine to begin with spend- or average-based data. Over time, our joint goal is to improve data quality by collaborating with suppliers, requesting detailed documentation, and tracking more specific capital projects. Every year is an opportunity to get closer to supplier-specific numbers—and every step you take increases the transparency and impact of your decarbonization journey.

Data Collection Steps: A Collaborative Approach

Map Your Capital Purchases

Create a list of all major goods, machinery, vehicles, and infrastructure assets you purchased or commissioned within the year.
Don’t worry if some purchases seem minor—focus first on high-value or high-volume items.

Classify Your Capital Goods

Distinguish between:
- Production capital (e.g., manufacturing equipment, logistics vehicles)
- Office/operational capital (e.g., computers, furniture, building renovations)

Prioritize What to Focus On

Start with your largest or most emission-intensive assets (think: new factories, major vehicle fleets, big IT upgrades).
If in doubt, use an 80/20 rule: typically, a few “big ticket” items will drive most of the GHG impact.

Collect Emission Data

Aim for primary/supplier data where possible! Ask for Environmental Product Declarations, specific carbon footprints, or LCAs.