Spheres of Influence - Maximizing Organizational Influence for Climate Progress

For the last year and a half, I’ve been working with Futerra, Oxford Net Zero, and a group of pilot partners to develop Spheres of Influence. The thesis is simple and conceptually well established. Companies absolutely need to reduce their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, and faster than they have been. But Scopes on their own are not enough to get the world to net zero.

Why? Because companies do not operate in a vacuum. They depend on, and shape, major systems, norms, policy environments, finance flows and supply chains. Many of which are still reliant on, or enable the continued dominance of fossil fuels and high-emitting practices.

So when a company sets a target to cut its own emissions, it is also betting on those wider systems to decarbonize fast enough for that target to become achievable. And the systems have not been moving fast enough – thus a flurry of climate goal revisions ahead of an impending ‘mass fail event’ in 2030. A key point behind Spheres is that we have, until now, treated credible climate action too narrowly, as if a company’s only job is to manage the emissions inside its own inventory. This Scope-centric thinking has missed a big, influence-shaped piece of the puzzle. If companies shape society, why are we excluding their influence?

Definition of Spheres of Influence:

Spheres of Influence is a framework that defines and organizes how companies can drive emissions reductions beyond their own Scope 1, 2 and 3 inventories, by shaping the systems, markets and norms that enable global decarbonization.

Why was it developed?

Traditional corporate climate action has focused on reducing emissions within a company’s own footprint. But companies don’t operate in isolation, they influence supply chains, policy, finance, culture and the availability of climate solutions.

Spheres of Influence was developed to:

• Address the gap between company-level action and system-level change
• Recognize and incentivize climate efforts that are currently invisible or undervalued because they fall outside standard accounting
• Help companies actively accelerate the transition to net zero, not just depend on it

How it differs from traditional carbon accounting

Traditional carbon accounting measures and manages the emissions a company is responsible for (Scopes 1, 2 and 3). Spheres of Influence complements this by focusing on how a company uses its influence to reduce emissions beyond its own footprint.

In practice, this means:

Carbon accounting = tracking and reducing your emissions
Spheres of Influence = expanding your impact by shaping the systems that determine everyone’s emissions

So what is Spheres of Influence?

Spheres of Influence provides a place to name, organize and give credibility to the ways companies can drive impact beyond their organizational net zero goals.

It represents ways companies help make climate solutions more available, affordable, scalable and normal.

You might be thinking “this doesn’t sound new,” and you’d be correct! The concept is not new. Beyond value chain mitigation, avoided emissions, enabled emissions reductions, climate solutions, corporate climate advocacy, etc. have all been discussed for decades. What is new is the attempt to bring these actions together into a coherent framework and define them with enough rigor that they can be taken seriously (i.e., assessed, compared, improved and incentivized). Including this work as a critical and necessary complement to Scope reductions within a corporate climate strategy is essential to ensuring that we see meaningful environmental outcomes.

The Spheres framework exists to create more discipline in this space. Right now, many companies are doing very important work that is invisible, unrewarded, and underfinanced because it does not fit neatly into scope-based accounting. Others make broad claims about enabling emissions reductions without enough transparency about what is happening, how impact is being measured, or whether the activity is additional. Spheres can help distinguish meaningful, intentional efforts to decarbonize the systems that shape society. And by telling the story of progress and collaboration, those of us developing the Spheres framework hope to enable more rigor, effort and momentum.

The Three Spheres

Sphere A is about products, services, and business models.

This is what a company brings into the world, including the ways a company helps customers, clients or users to reduce their emissions or access climate solutions. The sub-spheres in A include product and service innovation, business model innovation and climate solutions R&D. In practice, that means asking how much carbon do your products and services help others save? How are you decoupling growth from material consumption? How is your R&D helping accelerate climate solutions?

Sphere B is about how a company uses its money.

This includes investments, procurement, advance market commitments, offtake agreements, financing, philanthropy, or other forms of capital that influence environmental outcomes. It recognizes that money is not neutral. Where companies direct capital can either reinforce the status quo, or help build the net zero systems we need.

Sphere C is about how a company uses its voice.

This includes policy advocacy, industry engagement, cultural influence, partnerships and public communications that help create the enabling conditions for climate solutions. What I love about this sphere is its interplay with all other parts of a corporate strategy – climate, business or otherwise. Because even the best technologies and business models will not scale without policy, norms, markets and public trust supporting them.

Together, the three spheres help describe a fuller picture of corporate climate influence to align what companies make, what they fund and what they advocate for to achieve global and organisational net zero.

What comes next?

The current phase of work is making Spheres more practical. We are developing recommendations for KPIs, refining the white paper, and piloting the approach with companies who are using the framework to assess current efforts, identify gaps, and build more credible strategies for influence. Check out Oatly’s first ever Spheres strategy here!

If corporate climate action is going to mean anything over the next few decades, it has to get bigger than Scopes. Companies are huge emitters, and they need to be held accountable for cutting their emissions, and FAST. But they are also investors, innovators, buyers, advocates, employers, storytellers and political actors. Their influence does not stop at the edge of their GHG inventory.

Spheres is a way to take that influence seriously, to say, yes, absolutely reduce your footprint, but don’t forget to look up! Look at what you make easier, cheaper, normal, what you fund, fight for, and help society imagine. Because net zero will not be reached one company at a time in isolated spreadsheets. We will get there by changing the systems those companies depend on to maximize their chances of success in hitting their inventory goals and the whole world to accelerate societal decarbonization.

In our next blog, we will be covering examples of how some members of our partner group are already using their influence and innovation to help deliver global net zero.