Four questions about Science Based Targets

Scania wants to halve the emissions from its own operations and reduce emissions from its heavy vehicles with more than 20% before 2025. To underline how important climate is, Scania had its Science Based Targets (SBT) approved as the first among heavy vehicle manufacturers.

Andreas Follér, Head of Sustainability at Scania

Andreas Follér, Head of Sustainability

You say that these targets represent a radical leap in ambition, why is that?

“The targets are highly ambitious in scope, because they cover not just the emissions related to our own operations, but also those produced by our vehicles while they are in use around the world. These emissions makes up by far the largest portion of Scania’s overall carbon footprint.

Since Scania is the world’s first heavy vehicle manufacturer to set Science Based Targets, we are challenging business-as-usual in our industry. We are sending a clear signal to our employees, partners and customers that we need to take a collective ownership of climate change and that we will turn every stone to transform the world of transport to a sustainable one."

"We are sending a clear signal that we need to take a collective ownership of climate change and that we will turn every stone to transform the world of transport to a sustainable one."

How do Scania measure climate impact from it's products when used by customers?

"Almost all companies in the world uses approximations and assumptions to say something about their indirect emissions. Scania will measure the climate impact from its products by using the operational data from all its connected trucks and buses globally. We will collect the data from individual trucks and buses during one year and use it to analyse the real energy consumption and the amount of kilometres travelled. We will then add information about what kind of energy that have been used to calculate the climate impact."

Is your Scope 3 emissions the same as your customers’ Scope 1 emissions? Does that mean that you are counting the emission twice?

"Yes, two or more companies may account for the same emission. The scope 1 emissions from a haulage company are scope 3 emissions from both the vehicle manufacturer and the buyers of transport services. Each of these three companies has different and often mutually exclusive opportunities to reduce emissions. Companies with system level ambitions takes all scopes into account and support emission reductions up and down their supply chains. Given that more than 90% of emissions in our sector happens in Scope 3, we don’t think it would be serious not to take that into account in our ambition.“

You have other carbon reduction targets than the Science Based Targets. How do the different targets relate to each other?

Scania’s Science Based Targets includes the entire Scope 1 and 2 emissions of the company. As the vast majority of our emissions occurs when our products are being used we have also chosen to set a target on this category of our Scope 3 emissions.

Other Scope 3 emissions are treated separately as they are measured differently. A very important carbon reduction target relates to our logistics. Another target is to run our global production system on 100 percent fossil-free electricity. That target was achieved already in 2020.