AGREENA | WHITEPAPER
The dangers of double counting and freeriding Without independent controls, Scope 3 reporting is rife with integrity risks. Freeriding occurs when companies benefit from the reductions achieved by others without contributing to their cost or implementation. Double counting happens when more than one actor claims the same carbon reduction, inflating total impact and distorting regulatory and investor reporting.
Luke is clear on the stakes:“ Scope 3 emissions often overlap – without clear rules and visibility, this creates two major risks: companies benefit from the emission reductions of others without contributing; and double counting, whereby the same reduction or carbon removal is claimed by more than one company, inflating collective progress.”
These problems erode trust, slow the pace of real climate action and raise questions about the actual value of corporate sustainability commitments. The only solution is transparency – verified data, clear ownership and public tracking of Impact Units from field to enterprise.
By automating manual processes and standardising data, dMRV systems rapidly accelerate the verification cycle, offering field-level transparency crucial for compliance and investor scrutiny.“ Our system delivers speed by accelerating verification cycles, as proprietary machine learning platforms rapidly process and analyse geospatial data, significantly reducing data processing time from months to hours,” Luke says.
Cross-verification between primary( farmer-reported) data and satellitederived outputs further reduces fraud risk and strengthens the credibility required for third-party verification by organisations like SustainCERT.
The role of technology Technological innovation has created digital measurement, reporting and verification( dMRV) tools that reliably track climate outcomes at scale. Platforms like AgreenaGro use satellite imagery, AI and farmer-reported data to monitor millions of hectares, producing auditable datasets for independent verification.
84 February 2026