Small World Consulting Spend-Based Factors in Compare Your Footprint

VA
Valeria Lvova30 July 2026 · 6 min read

Spend-based factors are still the practical starting point for most Scope 3 Category 1 and Category 2 inventories. Compare Your Footprint integrates Small World Consulting’s multi-regional input-output (MRIO) spend-based emissions factors so organisations can screen purchased goods and services before chasing supplier-specific data.

Why spend-based factors still matter

Activity data and product carbon footprints are more precise when they are available. Most organisations do not have that coverage on day one. A complete spend screen finds the hotspots, prevents blind spots, and gives procurement a ranked list of suppliers and categories to engage.

What the SWC MRIO dataset provides

Small World Consulting’s current MRIO offering is designed for business carbon accounting rather than academic modelling alone. As of mid-2026, SWC publicly describes coverage of 79 countries, 102 sectors and tens of thousands of factors per year, with a time series through 2025 and factors available in purchasers’ and basic prices.

  • Country-of-demand and country-of-supply variants, depending on the data you hold.
  • Scope 1 / 2 / 3 breakdowns that help you substitute supplier-specific values later.
  • Inflation-aware historical factors so baselines and current years stay comparable.
  • Transparent methodology documentation intended for audit-ready reporting.

How Compare Your Footprint uses the factors

Inside Compare Your Footprint, spend lines can be mapped to industry and country factors so you can produce an initial supply-chain inventory quickly. From there, replace the material lines with activity data, supplier product footprints or better invoices as evidence improves.

That hybrid path is usually faster and more defensible than waiting for perfect primary data across the whole ledger.

When to move beyond spend

  • High-spend or high-intensity suppliers where product or activity data exists.
  • Categories that dominate your inventory after the first screen.
  • Procurement relationships where you can request supplier Scope 1 and 2 data.

Spend-based factors are not the end state. They are the map that tells you where better data will change the result.