Westcon-Comstor report shows internal progress on sustainability goals undermined by external factors

It's hard to celebrate progress on sustainability when your performance is largely in the hands of partners and vendors, says Billy MacInnes

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Image: Alena Koval/Pexels

24 July 2026

For channel businesses, being the middleman (or woman) is a core part of the job function. As it was, it is and ever shall be. For the most part, it’s a good place to be. Sure, there are times when you might be squeezed between vendors and customers, times when you might not be able to keep both sides happy, but if it was too easy, everybody would be doing it. And you just can’t have everyone in the middle.

One place where it’s very difficult to be someone cast in the middle is when it comes to efforts by channel companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

We have a great example of this in global distributor Westcon-Comstor, which published its annual Responsible Business Report this month. The report covers the company’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance during its financial year ending 28 February 2026.

First the good news. The distributor announced it had achieved a 42% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions since 2022, which puts it ahead of schedule to cut combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 50% by 2030.

Westcon-Comstor revealed it had also increased renewable electricity usage, with renewables accounting for 54% of its global electricity consumption, up from 50% the previous year (and 42% in 2024), which it claimed was moving it closer to the target of sourcing all electricity from renewable sources by the end of the decade. While that’s a commendable achievement, it still leaves quite a distance to go in the next four years so we’ll have to see how that goes.

The distributor highlighted some of the measures it has undertaken, including the installation of electricity sub-meters across strategic offices and logistics facilities, the introduction of global responsible business travel guidelines and integrating environmental KPIs into self-service reporting tools. Operations at key facilities in the UK and Australia are also being supported by on-site renewable energy generation. Looking to the future, the distributor plans to expand renewable electricity procurement outside Europe and introduce a company car policy prioritising electric and hybrid vehicles.

All good news. But there’s an important proviso. All those impressive achievements have been accomplished for emissions that are under the direct control of the distributor. The problem is that the other emissions, the ones not directly controlled or owned by Westcon-Comstor, are not following the same pattern. And those account for more than 99% of the distributor’s overall emissions.

Issues of scope

Scope 3 emissions increased by 6% “due to business growth and the associated manufacture, distribution and use of hardware products”. The distributor said that those emissions were “inherently more challenging to measure, manage and reduce than Scope 1 and 2 emissions” and conceded that “the current pace of change was behind the trajectory required for our FY30 target”.

The report identified two key drivers of Scope 3 emissions. Use of sold products (in terms of the energy used by customers over a product’s lifetime) accounted for 67% of those emissions and purchased goods and services (driven by the embedded carbon in raw materials, electrical components, and third party services) made up 29%.

Not surprisingly, Westcon-Comstor is trying to do something to strengthen Scope 3 emissions reporting through improved supplier engagement, expanded data coverage and enhanced methodologies. It believes that greater access to supplier-specific data will support more targeted emissions reduction efforts in future.

The distributor admits that achieving its target for FY30 target is “heavily dependent on the availability of product-specific data within our supply chain and decarbonisation in upstream manufacturing processes. Currently, a gap to target is projected, as we remain dependent on a spend-based methodology for our largest Scope 3 categories”.

It has identified a range of future measures to reduce Scope 3 emissions, including prioritising suppliers using environmental performance criteria, redesigning its portfolio to prioritise low-impact and circular products, expanding asset recovery and circularity services, requiring product-level PCFs, green freight procurement and greater partner engagement and product optimisation training.

Laura Mozden, global head of ESG at Westcon-Comstor welcomed the distributor’s “encouraging” progress on emissions reduction and renewable electricity, but conceded that “significant work remains. The biggest challenge is reducing emissions across our value chain, which is why we will continue to focus on improving data quality and driving deeper engagement with channel partners and vendors, while building the governance and reporting frameworks needed to support long-term sustainability improvements”.

It’s probably worth noting, at this point, that if you’re in the middle when more than 99% of your emissions are controlled and produced by others, that’s a really, really narrow space to be. No wonder channel companies are trying to make the middle a bigger place to be when it comes to Scope 3 emissions.