Scope 3 emissions are an ongoing rental industry challenge.

The challenges of dealing with ‘Scope 3’ emissions reporting and reduction were outlined in a recent article in International Rental News.

Rental companies are in a unique position when it comes to reporting the emissions they are responsible for because the vast majority of those emissions are generated by customers using their equipment. Nevertheless, the industry is under increasing pressure to not only report these ‘Scope 3’ emissions but also to reduce them.

It’s not an insignificant issue since these emissions can be orders of magnitude greater than those a rental company produces directly. Although methods have been developed to estimate the volume of ‘Scope 3’ emissions based on average daily usage hours for various types of equipment in a fleet, the resulting numbers are only estimates. The growth of telematics is expected to improve the data, but that will be a gradual process. So will replacing current fleets with emission-free equipment.

In the meantime, the industry will continue to do its best with the available tools to both make reporting more accurate and move toward a reduced carbon future.