Engaging the Value Chain for Decarbonization: Building Alliances

This blog is the second in our series on Engaging the Value Chain for Decarbonization. Missed the first installment? Catch up here.

No single company, regardless of its size, can transform its value chain alone. Meaningful change on a large scale – the kind that can achieve net zero goals – occurs when organizations come together to form beneficial partnerships based on common interests. Suppliers and customers, NGOs, and governments all have a role to play in the kinds of alliances needed to transform an industry.

Companies looking to meaningfully decarbonize their value chains may reap mutual benefits by forming alliances that leverage their shared interests toward the common goal of decarbonization – yet identifying allies may feel overwhelming.

Identifying Allies

To identify value chain partners, or even cross-industry partners, that may be willing to collaborate, consider the following questions:

• Who in my value chain needs support with decarbonization?
• Which companies purchase from the same high-emitting suppliers that I do?
• Which companies face downstream or regulatory pressures to decarbonize?
• Am I in an industry that relies on certain intermediaries that may be a leverage point for change?
• Are there alliances in place that I can join?

Once you have identified potential partners facing similar challenges, there are several ways to collaborate. Below we introduce three types of alliances that can leverage partnerships to achieve meaningful progress towards decarbonization.

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Coalitions Within and Across Industries

To encourage suppliers to make meaningful and often costly emission reductions – whether through decarbonizing a hard-to-abate manufacturing process or developing low-carbon materials – the economics need to make sense. Coalitions provide an opportunity to affect change beyond the economic limitations of a single company.

Decarbonization-driven coalitions can harness the purchasing power of multiple companies to add assurance of market demand for low-carbon products, as well as pressure that if the demand is not met, the market may go elsewhere. This aggregation of demand can reduce market uncertainty for suppliers, helping to ensure any investments they make in decarbonization will be supported by the coalition’s purchase commitments.

Coalitions are often comprised of both public and private companies, supported by partnering institutions, legal entities, and technical advisors. By working together, these parties have their best chance to drive meaningful change by pursuing strategies such as:

• Harnessing members’ purchasing power to drive change at scale
• Providing a platform for low-carbon suppliers to meet interested customers
• Facilitating data sharing between members to better meet downstream requests
• Educating members through training sessions, workshops, and webinars

Some cross-industry coalitions that have formed to achieve emissions impacts are:

• Mission Possible Partnership – MPP brings together sustainability leaders, financiers, customers, and suppliers in carbon-intensive industries such as steel, aluminum, cement, and chemicals to act on decarbonization initiatives.
• First Movers Coalition – Convened by the World Economic Forum and the U.S. State Department, FMC advances the most critical, emerging climate technologies and leverages members’ purchasing power to accelerate the decarbonization of heavy-emitting sectors.
• We Mean Business Coalition – WMBC’s goal is to drive collaborative leadership to solve the climate crisis, primarily through catalyzing business and policy action to halve emissions by 2030 and accelerate an inclusive transition to a global net zero economy by 2050.

Innovation Forums

Where industries are faced with the need for costly, systemic-level innovation and siloed research and development, privately- or publicly-funded forums may provide valuable resources and opportunities to test and scale new solutions, easing the transition to low-carbon technologies to reduce emissions in hard-to-abate or underfunded areas.

Such programs are typically convened by governments with ambitious targets, or by investors looking to finance new climate solutions. They allow interested parties such as companies, academics, and nonprofits to collaborate, bringing together expert insights and innovative capabilities while taking advantage of financial support.

These mechanisms are key to driving emissions reductions in another way, too: they can provide grants and technical assistance to Tier 3 suppliers such as farmers and raw materials partners, who often have significant emissions yet are left out of conversations around operational improvements due to their far upstream position.

Examples of innovation forums include:

• EU’s Horizon Europe Work Programme– Launched at the end of February 2026, the Clean Industrial Deal aims to transform decarbonization from a lofty target to a main driver of growth for European industries. Its Horizon Europe Work Programme provides nearly €5 billion for research and innovation on climate action.
• EU Innovation Fund – Funded by the EU’s emissions trading system, this program holds calls for proposals to advance the deployment of net-zero and other decarbonization efforts to support European industry’s transition to climate neutrality.
• Climate Finance Lab – This climate investor-led forum aims to bring transformative and financially sustainable climate solutions to developing countries that can be scaled or replicated through private-public collaboration.

Common Intermediaries

Business intermediaries, such as processors, contract manufacturers, and component fabricators, are often overlooked as potential partners in shared progress towards Scope 3 emission reduction goals. Engagement with intermediaries that work in raw material transformation or product manufacturing may uncover opportunities to minimize GHG emissions, especially in processing, manufacturing, and logistics processes.

Intermediaries may face similar challenges as their customers, such as pressure or constraints from investors or customers. Because multiple industries often have intermediaries in common, opportunities exist to consolidate demand for clean tech and further shift material flows within that industry’s value chain. By collaborating with an intermediary, companies can leverage their shared position in the wider supply chain to drive emissions reductions across the entire business ecosystem.

When Alliances Work – and When They Don’t

Alliances to reduce Scope 3 emissions can be built through cross-industry coalitions, government-funded innovation mechanisms, and intermediary businesses – but to be effective, they need to share important characteristics: clear and measurable commitments, diverse membership that represents meaningful market share, access to mechanisms for translating collective commitment into supplier engagement, and regular progress reporting and accountability.

Alliances can be less effective when they serve only as a discussion forum, when they lack actionable plans, when concerns around competition hinder meaningful commitment, or when membership is too narrow to represent real market influence.

How G&A Can Help

Supply chain decarbonization can’t be achieved alone—building alliances with like-minded partners is key. The question isn’t whether to collaborate, but instead who to collaborate with. Book a 20-minute call  with G&A today to discuss value chain engagement strategies for your sector or to identify the right coalition opportunities for your organization.

Neil Bradley

Neil Bradley is a Sustainability Analyst at Governance & Accountability Institute. His role is primarily focused on sustainability report development, ESG news research and analysis, and supporting a variety of additional client projects ranging from nature-related risk assessment to ESG datapoint gap analyses.