How Carbon Maps Helps Coopérative U Turn Scope 3 Insight into Daily Action

Coopérative U knew that switching off lights wasn’t going to move the needle anymore. When they looked at their Scope 3 emissions, they saw it made up the vast majority of their footprint. To act, they needed a clear, trustworthy view of product impacts across a huge assortment of ~200,000 SKUs. They started in spreadsheets; today they use a living, portfolio-wide view that the sustainability team checks regularly—and that buyers and quality engineers in commercial activities use, too.

About Cooperative U

Coopérative U is one of France’s largest grocery retailers, with more than 1,800 independently owned stores under a cooperative banner. Since 2010, Coopérative U has measured its Scope 1 and 2 emissions to meet regulatory requirements. As it broadened its assessment to Scope 3, the company confirmed that over 90% of total emissions lie beyond its direct operations—primarily within products. In 2024, its greenhouse-gas reduction pathway was validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

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The challenges

• Scope 3 dominance & complexity
  Identifying emissions hotspots across almost 200,000 of SKUs (food and non-food) to onboard their suppliers and adopt product-level decarbonization strategies.
• Limits of “average” data
  Public databases such as Agribalyse provide valuable baselines, but they reflect averages that don’t always capture improved agricultural practices. 
• Laborious and time-consuming spreadsheets
  Initial Scope 3 calculations were first based on spend and then on off-the-shelf emission factors, which were tracked in spreadsheets organized by major categories. While workable, they were slow to update and difficult to analyze and apply to decision-making. In the food industry, using spend-based emission factors can be highly misleading because a product’s price often has little to no correlation with its actual carbon footprint.
• Data foundations
  With a vast product catalog, success depended on “clean data” which meant having a clear source, is reliable and robust, so results would be reproducible year over year.
• Change management
  Coopérative U’s commercial activity teams needed granular and easy to access data to be engaged and they also needed to be equipped with a tool that’s easy to use for non-experts.

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What Changed with Carbon Maps

1) Product-level modeling with refined emission factors

Carbon Maps helped Coopérative U refine its carbon impact with per-product calculations across their assortment. . The approach combines trusted databases with refined emission factors that better reflect differentiated agricultural practices and real product recipes, so results align with how products are actually made.

2) Clean repeatable data flows

Together Carbon Maps and Coopérative U set up a reliable data feed: product master data maps cleanly into the calculations, and the pipeline runs the same way every year so data is comparable year over year.

3) Clear views for categories and suppliers

Coopérative U can now see carbon emissions hotspots by category and by supplier, making it easier to put in place action plans.

4) Pilot, calibrate, then scale.

Following an initial pilot with a small user group, Coopérative U and Carbon Maps tuned models, workflows, and UX (user experience)—then prepared a broader rollout so more collaborators  can use the tool for analysis and decision-making.

5) Training for non-experts.

Carbon Maps supported awareness and specialized training programs (e.g., for quality and packaging engineers) and emphasized an intuitive interface to lower the barrier for teams beyond CSR.

“For this to work, the tool’s interface needs to be user-friendly and easy to use, because otherwise you can’t get the teams on board, especially when you’re talking to people who aren’t climate experts.”

 — Chrystelle Giraud, Sustainability Department Project Manager, Coopérative U

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Key outcomes

• ‍From static spreadsheets to living insights.
  Coopérative U replaced one-off, months-long spreadsheet exercises with up-to-date product-level views.
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• Faster hotspot detection.
  Teams can pinpoint the highest-impact SKUs and suppliers and focus engagement where the impact is most consequential.
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• Broader adoption.
  A successful pilot paved the way for a wider rollout, helping bring climate considerations into exchanges with suppliers.
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• Foundation for product decarbonization.
  With clearer models and reliable data in place, Coopérative U can prioritize private-label products or high-impact product categories and begin planning steps for targeted reduction.

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Conclusion

By working with Carbon Maps, Coopérative U built the data, the modeling, and the buy-in needed to act on Scope 3 at scale. What began as a spreadsheet project is now an everyday capability—giving buyers, engineers, and sustainability leaders the insights they need to work efficiently on reducing their Scope 3 impact  and track progress year after year.

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