Reporting season is on the horizon for many New Zealand businesses. What if you could estimate your scope 3 emissions using financial data already in your accounting system?
In this 30-minute webinar, Jeff Vickers, Technical Director and Katharina Bauch, Head of Carbon, introduce spend-based emission factors and how to apply them.
thinkstep-anz's dataset provides emissions per dollar spent, making it ideal for screening, developing a baseline, or tracking your emissions year-on-year.
Watch the replay below or scroll for a quick recap of the key takeaways from Jeff and Katharina.
Understanding spend-based emission factors
Jeff explained what spend-based emission factors are, how they work and where they add value.
Simple to apply: Multiply dollars spent by an emission factor to estimate emissions quickly.
Complete coverage: Capture all spend across products and services, including full supply chain impacts.
Ideal for getting started: Build an initial scope 3 inventory or fill data gaps with minimal effort.
Category averages: Results are based on industry averages, not specific products or suppliers.
Best used in combination: Transition to a hybrid approach by integrating supplier or activity-based data for key categories.
Applying spend-based emission factors in practice
Katharina shares practical guidance on how to apply spend-based emission factors in your scope 3 reporting.
Use existing data: Map emission factors to general ledger codes or supplier data already in your system.
Clean your dataset: Remove non-emissions items and avoid double counting across scopes,
Focus on materiality: Prioritise high spend and high impact categories where effort matters most.
Simplify low-impact areas: Apply average emission factors to smaller or less material categories.
Document your approach: Maintain clear, consistent methods to support audits and future reporting.
Learn more about our spend-based emission factors.
About our spend-based emission factors for New Zealand:
You can download our audited emission factors here.
Our emission factors are based on local data from Statistics New Zealand, the Ministry for the Environment and the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, with import data sourced from a global database. The 2025 release has undergone external peer review by Market Economics Ltd. The commercial version (covering the 2023 year) was audited by McHugh & Shaw.
Want to know more? Read our new frequently asked questions.