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Short answers on Scope 3, store energy, refrigeration and carbon rules in retail. To see them worked out with your own chain’s data, book a demo.
Carbonova connects store and distribution centre energy, refrigeration service records, fleet and transport data and merchandise purchases from the ERP to CarbonOS, a platform of AI agents. CarbonOS calculates emissions per store, channel and SKU, flags stores with unusual energy use or refrigerant top-ups and ranks measures by cost and CO₂ avoided, while the supply chain agent works on Scope 3 with suppliers.
Most of them sit outside the stores, in the goods bought from suppliers and in transport, which make up Scope 3. On average, the supply chain emissions of companies reporting to CDP are 26 times their emissions from direct operations (CDP, 2024). In stores and distribution centres, the main sources are electricity for refrigeration, air conditioning and lighting, in Scope 2, and refrigerant leaks, in Scope 1.
Large UK companies report energy use and greenhouse gas emissions in their directors’ report under Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting, in force since April 2019. UK-listed companies also report against UK SRS on a comply-or-explain basis for accounting periods starting on or after 1 January 2027, with a one-year relief for Scope 3, where most of a retailer’s footprint sits (FCA, 2026).
Large undertakings, such as companies with 250 or more employees, must audit the energy used by their buildings, processes and transport every four years; for phase 4 they qualify on 31 December 2026, must notify compliance by 5 December 2027 and need 12 months of verifiable energy data, and the regulator can impose financial penalties. Carbonova keeps that metered data per store and depot and ranks the savings found by cost and CO₂, so the audit feeds a costed action plan.
The supply chain agent collects emissions data from suppliers and rates them with risk scorecards, so procurement and sustainability teams can focus on the categories that weigh most. Only four in ten companies engage their suppliers on climate issues (CDP, 2024), and that is where a retailer’s biggest lever sits. The lineage of every figure shows whether it comes from the supplier’s own data or from an average factor, which tells the team where to ask for primary data.
CarbonOS reads ERP systems such as SAP or Oracle, invoices, energy meters and IoT data from stores and the cold chain, plus TMS and WMS data from logistics, then normalises and versions everything. Each value keeps its lineage back to the source invoice or meter, a versioned emission factor and a change history, in line with the ISO 14064-3 verification standard, which supports both disclosures and environmental claims.
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