[Editor's note: This content was authored by BSR, a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability.]

With the release of guidance on supply chain reporting by the Greenhouse Gas Protocol just around the corner, companies will soon have more clarity on how to manage "Scope 3" emissions.

At the same time, companies such as HP and others in BSR's Energy Efficiency Partnership are working with a growing number of suppliers on climate change. As a result of these developments, minimum expectations for climate reporting on the supply chain are rising.

Now is the time for your company to embrace transparency, if it hasn't done so already. It will help investors and partners, who increasingly see transparency as an indicator of a company's competence, perceive your business as trustworthy. It will make outstanding achievements more credible, and it may even soften potential criticism, which is valuable in an environment where just about everyone, from journalists to employees, is inclined to write, blog, and tweet about your business.

But such transparency doesn't come easily.

For one, almost every interest group, from consumers to investors to governments, has different information requirements, making reporting on climate impacts less about creating a single, comprehensive document and more about sharing granular information. The differences are growing. Consumers, for example, are using the Good Guide to screen for criteria that are most important to them, in effect creating their own "personal" certification.

Another challenge is the increasing demand for more specific information about companies' suppliers -- and their suppliers -- when there is a lack of standards on what should be reported, when, and how.

A third challenge is the sheer expense of transparency, which takes substantial time and effort to effectively monitor and communicate.

To overcome these hurdles to transparency, we recommend a practical, three-part approach that involves monitoring your impacts, translating that data into actionable information, and promoting governance standards that catalyze progress.

1. Monitor in Order to Measure

Satisfying demands for granular information about climate impacts requires good measurement. Fortunately, most greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts boil down to energy, which is easy to measure.

Unfortunately, many suppliers whose impacts you want to report don't have the monitoring equipment that's needed to do so. It is unusual for suppliers in many countries, especially China -- which matters most for many companies -- to manage their energy use at all, both because they perceive it as a way to keep overhead low and because they don't see other suppliers doing it.