Category 2 Starter Kit: Capital Goods

Inventory capex projects and build a practical, improvable baseline

Scope 3, Made PracticalCoreStarter Kit45 min

What you'll accomplish

  • Determine relevance of Cat 2 for your organization
  • Build a capital goods inventory from recent capex
  • Create a minimum viable estimate (spend-based) and document gaps
  • Define an improvement cadence

Who this is for

Sustainability teams

Owning Scope 3 inventories

Finance / FP&A

Who manage capital planning and capex records

Asset managers

Overseeing major building projects

Ops teams

Coordinating equipment replacements

Quick start (45 minutes)

  • •Pull last 3 years of capitalized expenditures (GL exports, project lists)
  • •Categorize by type (buildings, HVAC, vehicles, equipment, IT)
  • •Apply spend-based emission factors (EEIO) to each category
  • •Document assumptions and gaps
  • •Add improvement plan: which categories to refine with supplier-specific data

Common pitfalls

Including operating expenses

Fix: Cat 2 is only capitalized goods—not leased or rented

Excluding leasehold improvements

Fix: If you capitalized them, include them

Inconsistent time boundaries

Fix: Align with your fiscal year and reporting period

Confusing with Cat 1

Fix: Cat 1 = purchased goods/services; Cat 2 = capital assets (depreciated)

Change log

v1.0 (2026-01): Latest release