GHG inventory Scope 3 template: the 15 categories, what ESRS E1-6 asks for, and an Excel workbook with sourced factors for the categories most companies report first

A Scope 3 template is only as good as two things: whether it walks you through all 15 categories before you decide which ones matter, and whether every factor in it names its source. This page gives the category list, what the European Sustainability Reporting Standards ask a company to do with it, and the Excel workbook Bindler built: Scope 1, 2 and 3 sheets on one factor register copied from the UK Government's 2025 conversion factors with their official IDs. It is honest about what the register covers (business travel, hotels, water, energy supply chain) and what you add yourself (purchased goods, capital goods, commuting, use of sold products, and the rest).

The 15 Scope 3 categories

The GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard (2011) splits value-chain emissions into eight upstream and seven downstream categories:

What ESRS E1-6 asks for

Disclosure Requirement E1-6 in ESRS E1 (Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772) requires gross Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3 and total GHG emissions in tonnes of CO2e (paragraph 44). For Scope 3 the application requirements (AR 46) say the undertaking shall:

• follow the GHG Protocol Scope 3 Standard's principles and provisions, or may use Commission Recommendation (EU) 2021/2279 or EN ISO 14064-1:2018 for quantification; a financial institution considers PCAF Part A;
• screen its total Scope 3 emissions across the 15 categories using appropriate estimates (or the EN ISO 14064-1 clause 5.2.4 categories);
• identify and disclose its significant categories by the magnitude of estimated emissions and the other criteria in the Scope 3 Standard (pages 61 and 65 to 68): spend, influence, transition risks and opportunities, stakeholder views;
• calculate or estimate emissions in each significant category with suitable factors;
• update each significant category every year from current activity data, and refresh the full Scope 3 inventory at least every three years or after a significant change;
• disclose the share of Scope 3 measured with primary data from suppliers, and for each significant category the boundary, method and any tools used.

So the order of work is: screen all 15, pick the significant ones, calculate those properly, and say how. The paragraph numbers are those of the 2023 text. A revised set of ESRS was due from the Commission by 18 September 2026 under Directive (EU) 2026/470; this page is re-checked against it once it is published.

The workbook

The GHG Protocol Scope 1, 2 and 3 Inventory Workbook, $29, is seven sheets with live formulas, no macros, no locked cells:

1. Guide: what it is, how to fill it, the location-based and market-based rule for Scope 2.

2. Organisation: name, reporting year and period, consolidation approach (operational control by default), base year, FTE and revenue for the intensity metrics.

3. Summary: totals by scope and share, total location-based and market-based, tCO2e per FTE and per million revenue, and Scope 3 by activity type (flights, rail, car, hotels, water, electricity transmission and well-to-tank, fuel well-to-tank).

4. Factor Register: 35 factors copied from the UK Government GHG Conversion Factors 2025 (DESNZ) flat file, each with its official ID, unit, scope and year. The Scope 3 rows are category 3 (electricity T&D losses 0.01853 and generation well-to-tank 0.0459 kg CO2e per kWh, LPG well-to-tank) and category 6 (flights by haul and class, with radiative forcing where DESNZ applies it, national and international rail, average cars by fuel, hotel nights UK and London) plus water supply and treatment. Add rows for your own categories with the factor and its source; a factor without a source is the one thing the Guide tells you never to leave.

5. Scope 1, Scope 2, Scope 3: one row per activity per site. Pick the code, the description, unit and factor fill in from the register, enter the quantity, and the row returns tonnes CO2e. The Scope 3 sheet has 60 rows and columns for the evidence and a 1 to 5 data quality score, so the "share measured with primary data" disclosure has something to count.

The workbook ships verified on a test basket: Scope 1 42.522, Scope 2 44.25, Scope 3 10.562, total 97.334 tCO2e, each matching a hand calculation from the register factors.

What the workbook does not do

It does not hold spend-based factors for categories 1 and 2, commuting surveys for category 7, or product use models for category 11; those need your own data and factors (supplier-specific, a national database, or an environmentally extended input-output table) entered on the register with their source. It does not do the significance screen for you: the 15-row table above is the checklist, and the Summary's category breakdown is where the result of that screen lands once the rows are in. For the Scope 2 half of the inventory, the free Scope 2 calculator gives the location-based and market-based pair from the same DESNZ grid factor.

Sources

• GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standard (2011), Table 5.4 for the 15 categories, pages 61 and 65 to 68 for the significance criteria as cited by ESRS AR 46: ghgprotocol.org/standards/scope-3-standard.
• Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/2772 (ESRS), ESRS E1 Disclosure Requirement E1-6 paragraphs 44 and 51 and application requirement AR 46: eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg_del/2023/2772/oj.
• UK Government GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting 2025 (DESNZ), flat file, the IDs on the workbook's Factor Register: gov.uk/government/collections/government-conversion-factors-for-company-reporting.
• Directive (EU) 2026/470 (Omnibus I) for the 18 September 2026 ESRS revision date: eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2026/470/oj.

Last checked against the sources on 20 September 2026.