Monitoring Our Emissions

Rio actively supports customers with sustainability measurement and management.

This approach to understanding sustainability is also used internally, to support Rio as an enterprise. In 2019, we conducted a GHG Protocol (GHGP) aligned materiality analysis, outlining a footprint of 21.5 tonnes of Co2e.

The process of determining materiality using the GHGP is not yet grounded in the same robust control as financial accounting. We are a sustainability accounting platform, focused on that mission. To give enterprises the confidence and capability to disclose audit-grade sustainability performance information.

Under the GHGP, Rio would have been able to outline a substantially lower GHG emissions footprint, as our offices are leased, we have no direct ownership over assets which burn fossil fuels and we limit all business travel to critical occasions, driven by our customers or growth.

This is why in FY24, we rebaselined including an estimation of our suppliers’ contribution to our net GHG footprint.Unsurprisingly, Scope 3 emissions (at 98%) represent the majority of our contribution to global warming and climate change.

It does not matter if it is indirect or direct, we need to use the GHGP to unravel double counting and arrive at a global net-zero economy. GHGP-aligned disclosures, often voluntary and not externally validated can be misleading.Between 2025 and 2030, we are engaging with all of our suppliers using the Rio platform to gain precision over their operational (Scope 1 and 2) GHG emissions and therefore contribution to Rio.

We offer our suppliers a simple straightforward approach to outline how their GHG emissions differ from the vastly over-estimated, spend-based calculation which we use as a starting point. By 2030, no more than 10% of our GHG emissions will be offset via the voluntary carbon market in line with industry-accepted science-based Based Targets.

We continue to prioritise suppliers that utilise renewable energy and commit to Net Zero by 2050, or earlier their procurement policy.