The 91 Percent Problem: What ROSEN's First Scope 3 Count Reveals About a Technology Company's Real Footprint

For a company whose business is keeping energy infrastructure safe, ROSEN Group has spent much of its history looking at other people's assets. Its inspection tools travel through pipelines, its analysts interpret what those tools find, and its engineers help operators decide what to repair and what to leave alone. With the publication of its Sustainability Report 2025, the company has turned the same disciplined gaze on itself, and the result is one of the more instructive pieces of climate accounting a privately run technology group has put in front of the public this year. The headline is a single number that should make anyone who works in services or technology pause. Of the 94,281 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent that ROSEN reports for 2025 on a market-based basis, 85,840 tonnes sit in Scope 3, the indirect emissions that occur in the value chain. By our own arithmetic from the report's table, that is roughly 91 percent of the total.

This is ROSEN's second sustainability report, but the first to cover the entire group. The 2024 edition was limited to two entities, ROSEN Technology and Research Center in Lingen, Germany, and ROSEN Europe in Oldenzaal, the Netherlands. The 2025 report widens the lens to all 36 entities, organised across North and South America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific. It describes a group present in 23 countries and operating in more than 110, with over 4,000 employees. The report was prepared voluntarily with reference to the European Sustainability Reporting Standards, and it is careful to say that it is not yet fully compliant with them. That candour runs through the document and is one of the reasons it repays close reading.

A footprint that is mostly somebody else's

The data in the climate chapter is compact enough to take in at a glance. Gross Scope 1 emissions, the direct emissions from fuel burned in ROSEN's own vehicles and facilities, come to 2,919 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Gross Scope 2 emissions, from purchased electricity and heat, are 5,989 tonnes on a location-based basis and 5,521 tonnes on a market-based basis. Add the two together on the market-based method and ROSEN's own operational footprint is about 8,440 tonnes. Scope 3, at 85,840 tonnes, is more than ten times larger. The report gives total emissions as 94,748 tonnes location-based and 94,281 tonnes market-based.

Anyone who has followed corporate climate reporting will recognise the shape. Asset-light businesses, from software firms to consultancies to inspection specialists, routinely discover that the emissions they control directly are a small fraction of the emissions their activities set in motion. What makes ROSEN's disclosure useful is that it names the hotspots. The report states that the group's footprint is dominated by Scope 3, with purchased goods and services and upstream transportation and distribution together accounting for 68 percent of the Group's greenhouse gas footprint. For a company that manufactures sophisticated inline inspection tools, ships them around the world and buys in components, materials and services to do so, that makes intuitive sense. The footprint lives in the supply chain and in the freight network that carries equipment to the field.

The report is also honest about how the number was built. Scope 3 emissions are, in its words, largely calculated using a spend-based approach, which means that purchasing records are converted into emissions using average factors rather than measuring what each supplier actually emitted. ROSEN cites recognised references for those factors, including DEFRA 2024, the International Energy Agency's 2024 data, the US EPA's 2022 factors and the NAICS-6 industry classification. Value chain data comes from indirect sources such as sector benchmarks and third-party databases, with EcoVadis IQ Plus named as an example, and the company acknowledges that the use of proxies carries limitations. The inventory includes selected Scope 3 categories, chosen through a significance assessment based on the magnitude and financial cost of expected emissions, rather than all fifteen categories of the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.

None of that is a criticism. Spend-based accounting is how most companies begin, because it can be done with data already sitting in the finance system. But it has a well-known consequence: the figure moves when prices move, and it cannot reward a supplier for being cleaner than average. ROSEN says it intends to shift progressively toward activity-based and weight-based calculations as data quality improves, and to strengthen supplier engagement and direct data collection across the value chain. That is the right direction, and it is also the reason the 2025 number should be read as a baseline rather than a verdict.

What the energy data says about the other nine percent

If Scope 3 is the elephant, the energy table in the report describes the part of the room ROSEN fully controls. Total energy consumption in own operations was 28,185 megawatt-hours in 2025. Fossil sources and nuclear account for 25,617 megawatt-hours, or 90.9 percent, leaving renewable sources at 2,568 megawatt-hours, or 9.1 percent. Within the fossil share, purchased electricity, heat, steam and cooling from fossil sources is the single largest line at 15,868 megawatt-hours, followed by petroleum-product fuel at 4,976 megawatt-hours and natural gas at 4,774 megawatt-hours. Renewable energy comes mainly from purchased electricity at 2,132 megawatt-hours, plus 436 megawatt-hours of renewable fuel and 297 megawatt-hours of on-site renewable production.

The report is explicit about what this means for decarbonisation: within Scopes 1 and 2, the main emissions hotspot is electricity purchased from non-renewable sources. That is a comfortable problem to have, relatively speaking, because electricity can be decarbonised by contract and by investment. The report also notes that the Lingen site accounted for 68 percent of the Group's Scope 2 emissions in 2024, which concentrates the opportunity in one place. A new rooftop photovoltaic system of 2 megawatts is being installed there, with final commissioning planned for early 2026. It is expected to replace around 16 percent of the site's externally sourced electricity, with close to all of the renewable power generated used on site, and to reduce emissions by more than 750 tonnes of CO2 equivalent a year. ROSEN adds that earlier solar installations already operate in Calgary, Canada, Perth, Australia and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Set against a Scope 3 footprint of 85,840 tonnes, a saving of 750 tonnes is small, and the report does not pretend otherwise. What it does show is the sequencing logic that most companies follow: fix what you control first, build the muscle for measurement, and then take on the supply chain. The Lingen site also achieved ISO 50001 energy management certification in 2025, audited by Bureau Veritas, and the research centre's head of health, safety and environment is quoted in the report as saying the milestone "reflects true teamwork and shows what becomes possible when many small efforts come together."

Levers that move the Scope 3 needle

The more interesting question is what, concretely, can shrink the 91 percent. Working with an external advisor, ROSEN built an emissions baseline for 2024 and a decarbonisation model that projects emissions from 2024 to 2050 under defined growth assumptions, including a business-as-usual pathway. The levers identified through interviews with business experts are modest in number and refreshingly concrete: shifting equipment transport from air freight to sea and rail, standardising and optimising the resource efficiency of inspection tools and production processes, procuring green electricity from utilities, and accelerating the electrification of cars and light commercial vehicles.

The freight lever is the one with the clearest evidence of early traction. In 2025 ROSEN revised its guideline for inspection tool allocation and utilisation, enabling smarter planning, quarterly performance reviews and incentives for choosing sea freight over air. The report says the company doubled its sea shipments and avoided 500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent, while saving money and improving operational efficiency. It adds, tellingly, that "this is just the starting point." Because upstream transportation and distribution sit inside the 68 percent hotspot, behavioural and planning changes of this kind are exactly where a spend-based inventory can show progress.

Other efforts are less far along, and the report says so. The company is expanding the use of IECEx-certified rechargeable batteries in pipeline inspection, increasing their adoption across Europe toward a 50 percent share of inline inspection runs, which improves safety, enables more compact next-generation tools and reduces waste and cost. It has progressed the local sourcing of polyurethane in North America, and is assessing whether similar approaches could apply to other products to cut transport-related emissions and costs. But on low-emission inline inspection services and more sustainable polyurethane options, the report states plainly that ROSEN has not yet achieved any results because of supply chain constraints. That kind of sentence is rare in corporate sustainability reporting, and it is a useful reminder that the hardest Scope 3 levers depend on suppliers and markets that no single buyer controls.

The pathway, and the targets still in review

The report places ROSEN's ambitions against a science-based yardstick. Applying a 1.5 degree pathway that reflects the Science Based Targets initiative's level of ambition, the analysis benchmarks a 42 percent reduction in Scopes 1 and 2 and a 25 percent reduction in Scope 3 by 2030, and an absolute reduction of roughly 90 percent across all scopes by 2050. The published targets table lists two goals: reducing Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 42 percent by 2030 from a 2025 baseline, and achieving net-zero emissions across Scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2050. On the metrics, the report records total emissions of 94,099 tonnes of CO2 equivalent and 22.9 tonnes per employee, and puts progress toward the net-zero target at 32 percent.

Readers should note two things about those numbers. First, the 94,099-tonne figure in the targets table is slightly different from the 94,281-tonne market-based total in the emissions inventory a few pages later, and the report does not explain the gap in the pages we reviewed; the difference is small, at under 0.2 percent, and is probably a matter of calculation basis, but it is a reminder that a first-year inventory is still settling. Second, the report is unusually frank about the status of the targets. It says they are under review based on the outcomes of the GHG accounting, climate risk assessment and decarbonisation planning, that they remain subject to C-level approval, and that quantitative milestones and implementation decisions are being finalised. It also states that ROSEN's targets have not been validated by the Science Based Targets initiative, that there are currently no active plans to submit them, and that the intended 2025 submission has been postponed.

Is that a weakness? In one sense, yes: an unvalidated target is a weaker signal to customers and investors than a validated one. But there is a defensible logic to doing the measurement before the pledge. A company that announces a 25 percent Scope 3 cut before it has a reliable Scope 3 baseline risks committing to a number it cannot track. ROSEN's choice to publish the benchmark trajectory as a reference, while holding formal approval until the inventory has matured, is a more conservative path than some peers take, and the report invites readers to judge the progress on its own terms.

Climate risk: what the scenarios say about Lingen and Houston

The climate chapter is not only about emissions. In 2025 ROSEN carried out an assessment aligned with the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures. The physical risk work screened all company-owned operational sites qualitatively and quantified the financial exposure of 64 sites for which financial data were available, drawing on year-end 2024 figures for gross property, plant and equipment, net inventory value and revenue. It used SSP5-8.5, a high-emissions scenario from the framework used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, across the current period and the 2030, 2040 and 2050 horizons. The finding: storms and wind, cyclones and flooding pose the greatest threats to operations, mainly through business interruption, and the sites in Lingen and Houston show the highest overall exposure.

The transition risk work compared a business-as-usual pathway with an SBTi-aligned pathway to 2050 using carbon and energy price assumptions drawn from sources including the IPCC, the International Energy Agency and the Network for Greening the Financial System. The conclusion is that a science-based trajectory reduces exposure to future carbon-cost impacts compared with business as usual. The report lists increased operating costs from carbon and energy pricing, higher supply chain costs, energy price volatility, regulatory and legal risk, and reputational risk among the relevant transition risks. It also sees opportunities where customer needs shift toward lower-carbon operations, resilience and new energy carriers, mentioning technological and market opportunities related to hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

The honest caveat is that this work has not yet reached the machinery of the business. ROSEN identified four climate risks and assessed 100 percent of its business units, but states that integration is not yet completed and the analysis was not yet considered in business decisions or strategic planning. The next steps it names are to bring the key risks into the enterprise risk management system and the corporate risk registry, to consider climate and other sustainability indicators in capital allocation decisions, and to expand the treatment of supply chain impacts. The company also notes that it has not yet adopted dedicated policies on climate mitigation, adaptation, energy efficiency or renewable energy, relying instead on its integrated management system policy, its ESG policy framework and its statement of priorities, goals and targets.

The handprint question

There is a second side to ROSEN's climate story that the 2025 report treats cautiously. The company's customers operate pipelines and energy networks, and ROSEN's technology helps them find defects before they become leaks, extend the life of existing assets and prepare infrastructure for new media such as hydrogen. The chief executive, Andreas Opfermann, frames the philosophy in the report's opening message: "We believe that technological progress drives sustainability." The climate chapter lists reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the value chain due to ROSEN's services as a climate-related opportunity.

What the report does not do is put a figure on that benefit. In explaining why pollution was dropped from its list of material topics, the company observes that although its solutions help customers prevent pipeline leaks and related pollution, the specific downstream effects are difficult to quantify and cannot be reliably attributed or measured at present. It also records that certain positive impacts were reclassified as potential because the outcomes depend on customer adoption and are neither systematically monitored nor quantifiable. That restraint deserves credit. Avoided-emissions claims are among the most contested numbers in corporate climate disclosure, and a company that declines to inflate them while it builds its own baseline is making a sensible choice. But it does leave a gap between the narrative of enabling the transition and the quantified footprint of 94,281 tonnes, and closing that gap with defensible data is likely to be one of the more interesting challenges for the next report.

What to watch in the next report

Three things stand out for anyone tracking ROSEN's progress. The first is the Scope 3 methodology: the move from spend-based to activity-based data will change the number, possibly materially, and the company's willingness to explain the shift will be a test of the transparency it has shown so far. The second is the status of the targets. With the 2030 Scope 1 and 2 goal taken from a 2025 baseline of roughly 8,400 tonnes on our reading of the market-based figures, a 42 percent cut implies getting to somewhere near 4,900 tonnes within five years, a figure that the Lingen solar array and a green electricity contract could go a long way toward delivering. The third is governance: the report notes that a group-wide Risk and Audit Committee was established in 2025 and that the ESG Committee supports the Shareholder Committee, but it will take at least a full reporting cycle to see whether climate risk genuinely enters capital allocation.

The broader lesson reaches well beyond a single pipeline-integrity specialist. Private companies are under growing pressure from customers, lenders and regulation to disclose value-chain emissions, often before they have the systems to do so. ROSEN's report shows both the value and the discomfort of that exercise. It shows the value because the first count immediately identified where the problem lives: in purchased goods, services and the freight that moves tools around the world. And it shows the discomfort because a number that large, built on spend-based proxies, sits awkwardly beside a mission built around making infrastructure safer and cleaner. The companies that will earn trust are those that, like ROSEN, publish the uncomfortable baseline first, say clearly what they have not yet achieved, and then show up the following year with a better number.

Why it matters

If a 4,000-person technology group finds that nine-tenths of its footprint sits in its supply chain, smaller private firms should assume the same shape applies to them. Measuring Scope 3 imperfectly, and saying so, beats waiting for perfect data, because lenders, customers and regulators are already asking.