You’ve done the screening. You know which Scope 3 categories matter, and which suppliers sit inside them. Now comes the delicate part: asking your suppliers for the data.
Handled badly, and the request could cost you in terms of your relationship and your finances, and you still might not get the number.
At Acumentis ESG we run these engagements with clients often enough to know what makes a supplier answer. Here’s how to ask.
Key takeaways
- Screen before you ask. A small number of suppliers often carry most of your supply chain emissions, and asking everyone costs you credibility.
- The request should come from whoever owns the commercial relationship. It lands very differently to a shared procurement inbox.
- Say what you’ll do with the data, and what you won’t. Suppliers assume it will be used to rank them or drop them.
Why supplier emissions requests go wrong
Most of them get sent the same way. A long questionnaire, from an unfamiliar address, to every supplier on the list at once, with a deadline attached and no explanation.
Put yourself on the other end of it. You’re a mid-sized business, a customer has just sent you forty questions about your energy use, and nobody has told you why or what happens if you don’t reply. You’d push it down the list too.
So the request gets ignored, or handed to whoever has the least on. Or worse, logged as a sign the relationship is becoming more work. Your own larger customers have been doing this to you for a while now, which is worth remembering before you send yours.
Step 1: Work out which suppliers you need data from
Not all of them. Most businesses find a handful of Scope 3 categories carry the bulk of the footprint, and inside those categories, a small number of suppliers account for most of the spend.
Screen first, then build the list. Asking two hundred suppliers for data you’ll only use from eight of them costs you twice: internally, because the exercise looks unfocused, and externally, because suppliers do in fact talk to each other.
Step 2: Decide what you need before you ask for it
Name the data points, the period, and the format. Clear questions get answered. Generic sustainability questionnaires get ignored.
Most suppliers can tell you their electricity consumption and fuel use for a financial year if you ask for exactly that. Very few can complete an open-ended ESG survey, and the ones who try will send you something you can’t use.
You might be wondering whether an industry-standard questionnaire solves this. It helps a supplier who already receives a lot of these and has the answers ready. But it’s a barrier to one who has never been asked before, which is probably most of your list.
Step 3: Send it through the person who owns the relationship
Whoever buys from that supplier should make the request, and should explain why it’s needed.
The same email is received differently depending on who sends it. From a name they know, with context about your reporting obligation, it feels like a colleague asking for help. From a shared procurement inbox, it reads as a compliance demand.
Then say what you’ll do with the data, and what you won’t. Suppliers assume emissions numbers will be used to benchmark them against competitors or justify dropping them later. If that isn’t your intention, tell them, because they won’t assume it.
Step 4: Make it easy to say yes
Give them everything they need to answer in one go:
- The reporting period you need
- The units you want it in
- Where to find the published emission factors
- Spend-based fallback if they hold no emissions data at all
- A deadline that doesn’t land on top of their own year end
The fallback is most important. A supplier who’s never measured emissions can still give you spend data. The Greenhouse Gas Protocol’s spend-based method turns that into a usable estimate. Asking for something they can provide is the difference between a reply and silence.
Ok, but what if a supplier says no?
Estimate it, explain how you did so, and move on. Record that you asked, because that record is part of your working.
Remember, first reporters get transition relief on Scope 3. One supplier who won’t engage shouldn’t hold up your baseline, and it’s still a better outcome than leaning on a relationship you depend on.
Here’s the best place to start
Take your screened list and sort it by who you talk to most. Begin with the suppliers where someone in your business already has a relationship worth using.
Send four questions rather than forty. Explain why you need them. Give them a way to answer even if they’ve never measured anything.
If your list is long or the relationships are commercially sensitive, our ESG consulting team can run the engagement alongside you rather than handing you a template.
Or if you’d rather talk it through against your own supplier list first, a free 30 minute conversation is often enough to work out where to begin.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. There’s no legal obligation on a supplier to provide emissions data to a customer. Most cooperate because the relationship matters to them, which is why how you ask affects whether you get an answer.
Use a spend-based estimate. You apply a published factor to what you spent with them, which gives you a defensible number while they build the capability to provide a better one.
Good enough that you can disclose the basis for it. A documented estimate with a stated method is more useful than a precise figure you can’t trace, particularly in a first reporting year.
It works better at renewal than mid-term. Adding a reporting clause while terms are already being negotiated reads as part of the commercial conversation, rather than a new obligation arriving on its own.
References
Greenhouse Gas Protocol: Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard
