A Perspective published in Nature Sustainability finds that companies can follow accepted emissions-accounting methods and still produce materially different estimates of their own climate impact. The lead author, Ramana Gudipudi of the European School of Management and Technology, and coauthors argue the underlying problem is not a lack of corporate ambition. More than 2,000 companies representing $36.6 trillion in annual revenue have committed to net-zero targets, yet the most recent Net Zero Stocktake found only 7% of those pledges meet what the researchers call genuine integrity.
Scope 3 Estimates Shift With the Method
Scope 3 supplies the clearest example. Companies typically rely on emissions factors, standardized multipliers, to estimate the greenhouse gases tied to purchased goods and services, since direct supplier measurements are rarely available. The researchers show that different factors and methodologies applied to the same underlying activity can produce estimates that differ by roughly a factor of two, enough for the same company to read as either a climate leader or a laggard depending on which approach it uses. The paper frames this as a structural problem with methodological flexibility and data quality rather than manipulation, one that expanding Scope 3 disclosure mandates are increasingly forcing companies to confront.
Growth Can Erase Efficiency Gains
Growth adds another wrinkle. The paper models net-zero feasibility for a hypothetical food and beverage company expanding between 2030 and 2050. The exercise illustrates a familiar problem: cutting the emissions tied to each unit of production does not lower total emissions if output grows fast enough. That makes emissions intensity, a common transition metric, incomplete on its own, since feasibility ultimately depends on how quickly the energy systems and supply chains underneath a business decarbonize, not just on internal efficiency gains. For companies leaning on supplier data that is not yet built for this level of detail, the gap between reported progress and physical decarbonization can run wide.
Researchers Call for Sector-Specific Net-Zero Blueprints
To close that gap, the authors propose industry-specific net-zero blueprints that connect corporate targets to sectoral transition pathways grounded in physical and scientific constraints, rather than a single corporate trajectory applied across a value chain that may span several sectors. The framework would also separate the drivers behind a reported emissions decline, whether it reflects operational efficiency, cleaner electricity, supplier decarbonization or simply a change in production, so corporate action can be distinguished from shifts happening elsewhere in the economy. Corporations are estimated to control 18 to 21 GtCO2e of annual mitigation potential, which is why the paper treats better measurement as a scientific problem with trillion-dollar consequences for where that capital goes. The proposal lands as related frameworks are already shifting, including the GHG Protocol, the Science Based Targets initiative's Corporate Net-Zero Standard, and ISO's developing net-zero-aligned organization standard, alongside broader disclosure regimes companies are already tracking for 2026.
None of this makes current emissions reporting irrelevant, the researchers write. It draws a line under a different limitation: a company can report increasingly detailed carbon accounts and still lack a reliable answer to whether its reductions represent the physical transition its net-zero target actually requires.
