Year: 2026 | Month: July | Volume: 13 | Issue: 7 | Pages: 154-160
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20260719
Reliable CO2 Numbers: Data Quality, Provenance and Uncertainty in Procurement Decisions
Lukas Büeck1, Lars Arnold Ritter2
1PhD Student, University of Library Studies and Information Technologies, Sofia, Bulgaria; 2Independent Researcher, Switzerland.
Corresponding Author: Lukas Büeck
ABSTRACT
Procurement decisions increasingly depend on the carbon footprint reported for purchased goods and services, yet the numbers that reach buyers vary widely in how they were produced. This review examined how the quality, provenance and uncertainty of emissions data shape the reliability of the carbon figures used in sourcing decisions across manufacturing and automotive supply chains. Recent open-access studies and the corporate greenhouse gas accounting standards were synthesised to trace where carbon data come from, how their quality can be judged, and how uncertainty arises and spreads. The evidence showed that supply-chain emissions dominate most corporate footprints while resting on the weakest data, since firms often replace measured supplier values with industry averages and spend-based estimates. Five recurring data-quality deficits were identified: unclear boundaries, limited verification, incomplete coverage, weak interoperability, and the use of generic instead of specific data. Uncertainty was found to enter through input parameters, methodological scenarios and the calculation models themselves, so a single value can hide a wide plausible range. Sharing primary data between trading partners, supported by digital platforms and clear governance, raised reliability, although adoption stayed uneven. The review concluded that procurement teams should treat a carbon figure as a claim with a known pedigree rather than a fixed fact, and should weight supplier comparisons by data quality. Implications for buyers, suppliers and standard setters were set out.
Keywords: carbon data quality, scope 3 emissions, data provenance, uncertainty, sustainable procurement, supplier selection, greenhouse gas accounting .
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