Question 1

General questions

Accepted Answer

Start by asking vendors to answer a few high-level questions about their focus areas and expertise.

What outcomes does a partnership with you enable?

Across the sustainability space, different vendors focus on different outcomes. Early on, you’ll want to zero in on which outcomes a partner enables, such as measuring your carbon footprint, helping you set targets and reduce emissions, helping you meet sustainability and ESG disclosure requirements, and gaining you access to decarbonization measures like sustainable aviation fuel or carbon removal. Identifying a vendor’s sweet spot will help you ensure those outcomes align with your own goals—both now and in the future.

What scientific and policy expertise does your company have, and how do customers access it?

Sustainability regulations are increasingly complex, and don’t necessarily align with each other. The right partner will have deep scientific and policy expertise to understand which approaches to measurement and action are auditable, credible, and high-impact, and what might be around the corner with upcoming policies.

You’ll also want visibility into where their expertise is coming from: for example, any scientific and policy experts a partner counts among its employees or advisors. Look for partners that have scientific and regulatory leaders—i.e., the people who draft the scientific standards and regulations that you’ll need to comply with—on board.

Is support included, or does it require a separate fee?

Some software solutions don’t include customer support; others do. How much support you require depends on your internal sophistication, goals, and regulatory requirements, and you’ll want to ensure you have a partner that matches your needs.

Do you have current customers we can speak to as references?

A great way of understanding if a partner might be the right fit for you is to speak to other companies they’ve worked with and understand what outcomes have been achieved, any pain points, and any other general advice as you make your decision. The best partners will be excited to connect you with other customers.

Question 2

Decarbonization questions

Accepted Answer

Dive deeper into how your prospective sustainability partner approaches decarbonization.

Does your product identify decarbonization hotspots and simulate decarbonization levers?

The first step of decarbonization is understanding where hotspots in your emissions footprint are so that you can focus on the largest opportunities for reductions. If reductions are a priority, make sure the product can identify those hotspots.

The important step after identifying hotspots is understanding the opportunities for reductions—i.e., which levers you can use to decarbonize. These are critical to understand as you consider setting emissions targets. The right product will recommend decarbonization opportunities, and help you prioritize and simulate the impact of reduction opportunities across different levels of ambition.

Does your product forecast your emissions according to your business growth across different scenarios?

Developing feasible reduction plans requires an understanding of your future emissions, not just your current footprint. You should be able to customize the forecasts to align with your internal business growth projections. A good decarbonization product has a forecasting methodology that you can understand and trust to reflect your business’s growth.

Forecasts are inherently uncertain, and it is critical to understand how your emissions are projected to grow across different potential scenarios. Choose a partner you can trust to help you strategize against multiple future scenarios.

Can we use the product to set science-based targets or create transition plans for upcoming regulations?

With rising stakeholder pressure, more companies are setting science-based targets every year. And transition plans, which follow a similar approach as science-based targets (i.e., how will your company align with a world where we limit global warming?), are increasingly required by regulations around the world.

Setting science-based targets or creating a transition plan requires understanding requirements for aligning to a temperature-based scenario, most often 1.5C. Yet climate science guidance on science-based targets and transition plans is always updating. If—like most companies—you’ll be required to build these plans, choose a partner with the ability to build them and keep you updated on the latest changes.

Do you have access to clean power, sustainable aviation fuel, carbon removal, or other reduction opportunities integrated into carbon footprint measurement tooling?

It’s important to understand how a partner can help you take action on your emissions; find a partner who has options that match your needs. They should set a high bar for their projects and use a deep team of scientists, external advisors, and market experts to source and vet projects to ensure their impact. If you’re a mid-sized company, look for partners that bring together collective buying power to unlock major projects that would otherwise be inaccessible.

Switching to clean power is a powerful and popular step companies can take to reduce carbon emissions. Most businesses rely on indirect methods to clean up their power sources, and methods vary significantly in impact, price, and complexity, which can be difficult for buyers to navigate. Make sure your partner offers clean power offerings that match the geographic diversity of your operations. This should include EACs and high-impact global Virtual Power Purchase Agreements (VPPAs) that foster new project builds on dirty grids and do not require you to participate in the sale of the electricity from that project.

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is another important reduction lever; if you’re interested in reducing flight emissions, understand if there are SAF offerings and how those SAF credits compare to jet fuel (there is currently a wide spectrum of impact).

If you’re interested in carbon removal or avoidance, ask how the partner vets potential projects, and look for a very high bar on additionality, permanence, and verification to ensure the credits you purchase are going to high-impact projects.

Question 3

Corporate measurement questions

Accepted Answer

For many companies, a first and fundamental step in up-leveling their sustainability is measuring their environmental impact at the corporate level.

Which greenhouse gas emission scopes can your product measure at audit-grade?

The Greenhouse Gas Protocol divides emissions into categories and subcategories, each with its own methodologies and heuristics. Regulations require different sets of these categories and subcategories, and you’ll want to ensure the product you use supports all of your required scopes to measure and report on.

Given some regulations like the CSRD and California’s CCDAA require reporting across all categories and subcategories, it’s safest to work with a tool that can measure all GHG categories.

What functionality is available to facilitate data acquisition and integration?

Getting your footprint right depends on ingesting business activity data into your platform. Software companies should offer a range of options that fit your business, from file uploads, to direct integrations and APIs. If there is a specific system or data source that you want integrated into your climate platform, make sure to ask about what integration is supported in your RFP.

How do you manage data governance and ensure only specific users have access to sensitive data?

Some of the business data that you upload for creating a footprint will be sensitive data that you only want a specific set of people to access. Make sure your RFP is checking to make sure data governance is in place to manage user permissions and data access.

Does your system provide live validations of input data and detect potential data quality issues and anomalies?

Not all data that gets ingested into your platform will be complete or error-free. You’ll want to make sure that the system you are using is able to flag potential errors to you right away, and can point out if there are gaps or anomalies in your data. You don’t want to do all the work of creating a footprint, only to find data errors at the end of the process.

Some RFPs also ask about automated data gap filling, but this can be a tricky capability. You’ll want to make sure you can review data gaps and anomalies, and manually update your numbers if needed. Sometimes the anomalies are incorrect, and could be due to a change in the business or the weather. It’s best to have the anomalies flagged to you so you can document if they are correct or need to be fixed.

How do you balance audit and transparency, while supporting customization of methodologies and emissions factors

The platform you choose should have auditability and transparency, and when you decide to make a customization in the platform, that needs to be traceable as well. If customizations are available on the platform you’re evaluating, make sure to ask how the documentation for those customizations is stored and tracked.

Which emissions factors and methodologies do you use to calculate emissions?

Make sure your vendors are following accepted standards, and also provide deep climate expertise with granular emissions factors. Carbon footprints should be calculated according to the GHG Protocol Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard and the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Accounting and Reporting Standards.

If you want a more granular, actionable footprint, you should make sure you have access to granular emissions factors developed with multi-regional input-output models, supplier data, and product data.

How do you create and update emission calculations?

Creating and updating calculations relies on deep climate science and extensive documentation, and is critical to accurately measuring your environmental footprint. Your vendors should offer documentation on the methodology behind every scope category and sub-category.

Does the tool allow for customized emissions factors?

Many companies have done their own extensive research on suppliers or materials that are a core part of their business. If this applies to you, make sure you can integrate your research and methodology into the system you choose.

Who chooses the emissions factors?

This question will make a significant difference in how much work you’ll have to do to produce a footprint. If the system requires you to select your own emissions factors, you’ll be spending a lot of time on manual work, or a lot of resources on support to do the emissions factor selections for you. If the system chooses emissions factors for you, then you need to make sure you have control to review and change the emissions factors if needed.

How does the software enable auditors to test data sources and calculations?

If the software can’t do this well, it’s a red flag. Auditors should be able to trace every source and calculation in the system you choose. Be sure to get a demo to see how the traceability works.

Do you support measuring non-climate data points across topics like water, pollution, biodiversity, and waste?

Disclosures—and in particular, the CSRD—are moving away from a world where sustainability is limited to climate. The scientific community has made it clear that environmental topics – and social and governance topics, too—are deeply interconnected, and policy is beginning to reflect that reality.

If you need to report on metrics beyond emissions, you’ll need to decide if you want to use the same product to measure those in the same place, or separate products for different topics.

Question 4

Reporting questions

Accepted Answer

Many companies start to take sustainability more seriously when they’re on the hook for reporting ESG data. If you need to meet sustainability disclosure requirements within a certain timeframe, it’s crucial to ask prospective vendors how much they’ll be able to help.

Which regulatory and voluntary reporting frameworks does your tool support and plan to support in the future?

Companies face a growing number of regulatory and voluntary ESG reporting requirements, and generating these reports is becoming increasingly time-consuming for ESG teams. The ability to automate the generation of the reports from an ESG data lake reduces both scope for error and makes the process more traceable and efficient. As these requirements change quickly, it is important to choose a software that will continue to provide support for any changes to existing frameworks and introduce support for new regulatory frameworks.

Does the tool support dashboard and reporting customizations?

Companies face a growing number of reporting obligations which don’t follow standardized templates. Examples include customers issuing RFPs that include sustainability questions, investors asking for information as part of their ESG due diligence, and more frequent internal reporting to company stakeholders. For these types of reporting needs, it is important to have a tool that allows sufficient customization to efficiently compile these types reports.

How does your tool support assurance across metrics and disclosures?

Auditors need clear audit trails, insight into methodologies and calculation trains, data lineages, and visibility into data ownership and controls. As regulations move towards requiring assurance, companies will need to have clear information available to auditors to avoid assurance delays or failures.

In choosing a partner, understand which auditors they’ve worked with historically, what percentage of companies’ measurements have passed assurance to date, and what functionality exists.

Does your product surface qualitative and quantitative industry and peer benchmarks to guide responses within reporting frameworks?

Understanding how your disclosures compare to peers and competitors will guide your decisions about what information to disclose, in what formats, when. Some vendors—especially the more experienced ones—offer a large and up-to-date database of ESG reports against which you can benchmark your disclosures. Enquire about the ability of providing both quantitative and qualitative benchmarks.

Does your product offer guidance on how to respond to disclosure frameworks?

ESG disclosure frameworks can be challenging to interpret without expert guidance. Evaluate tools with respect to whether tools offer in-product education and guidance. You should also evaluate the sophistication of the provider’s internal science and policy teams and advisory boards who guide the formulation of any in-product guidance.

How do you support different reporting levels, consolidation between entities, or changes in reporting and measurement levels over time?

Complex companies are likely to need to report at different “levels” for different regulations (e.g., report on only European entities under the CSRD, but global operations under California CCDAA). This might involve different scopes of measurement, tracking different targets, and consolidating data across different parts of the business.

Like with financial data, there are many complexities here; you’ll want to understand what flexibility exists in the partner you use, and how they operate (and streamline) amidst those complexities.

Question 5

Product-level emissions questions

Accepted Answer

For some companies, measuring emissions at the individual product level is critical to making specific products more sustainable (which, in turn, has been shown to increase sales and drive favorability among consumers). If your company produces consumer goods, it’s important to understand the degree of product-level analysis your vendor can provide.

Can we measure product-level emissions? And can we simulate the impacts of product-level decisions?

Product carbon footprints have intrinsic complexities that are different from how corporate carbon footprints are usually measured (e.g. system boundaries, level of details for materials and process emissions).

It is important to understand which methodology the provider is using for product carbon footprints and if these methodologies are cradle-to-grave and ISO compliant (e.g. ISO 14067).

Ask questions about how the provider will incorporate your product carbon footprint into your corporate footprint and vice versa (e.g. how transportation is accounted for) and how they think about allocating emissions across product categories when data is not available at the product level.

Very detailed LCAs are great to understand your product carbon footprints at a certain point in time, but usually not scalable across all your products if you have thousands of SKUs. Additionally they can be very time consuming and costly to run each year to reflect reductions. Ask about how the provider can scale product carbon footprints and reflect changes in your key decarbonization levers year over year.

Finally, ask about how the provider can simulate changes in your product designs and help you focus on what matters (e.g. energy use or materials) and particularly which database they are using and how transparent that database is.

Question 6

Supplier emissions questions

Accepted Answer

For many companies, supply chain emissions can account for a majority of overall greenhouse gas emissions (often, up to 80% or more)—so getting a clear view of your supplier emissions, along with levers for reducing them, is critical.

What’s your approach to measuring supply chain emissions?

Your vendor should have a robust approach to measuring Scope 3, or supply chain, emissions, especially as an increasing number of regulations require companies to disclose Scope 3 emissions (as do voluntary disclosure frameworks such as CDP) and for the majority of companies presents the largest opportunity to drive reductions. Ask whether Scope 3 emissions are included as part of the vendor’s standard corporate measurement, and their process for assessing Scope 3 emissions. You’ll want to ensure your vendor has a clear path to move from industry average calculations to supplier-specific emissions factors — to enable true opportunities to drive decarbonization initiatives across your value chain.

What tools do you offer to help companies engage with suppliers and reduce emissions?

Measuring your baseline Scope 3 emissions is just the first step. Regulators and stakeholders are increasingly pushing for measurable reductions in Scope 3, which often requires a frustratingly manual process of engaging individual suppliers to gather primary data and leverage sustainable procurement practices to encourage setting their own decarbonization targets. This is quite difficult for a company's procurement teams to scale with minimal sustainable sourcing resources historically. Some vendors, however, offer scaled supplier engagement solutions to help companies pinpoint supplier emissions hotspots, prioritize the biggest emitters, and take action, fast.

What type of enablement and resources do you offer for suppliers to help them accelerate their own sustainability journeys? Your suppliers will be at vastly different stages of the environmental journeys. Some may have done product-level LCAs, full Scope 1-3 footprints, but many may never have even heard of GHG measurement and will need support to either begin or accelerate their own journeys. You’ll want to make sure your tool is flexible to meet suppliers where they are — and give them resources to make progress towards their own decarbonization goals, and therefore your own Scope 3 reduction targets.

How does gathering primary supplier data inform decarbonization opportunities? Moving to supplier-specific emissions factors is necessary to help inform which suppliers have the largest opportunities to improve, thus initiating reductions modeling and sustainable procurement policies. You’ll want to understand that the vendor can take in primary supplier data — and help you identify opportunities to reduce with that supplier. For example, capturing suppliers Scope 1 and 2 data can help inform which suppliers are using renewable electricity. Leveraging this data — sustainability and sourcing teams can model the impact of other suppliers adopting renewable energy and incorporate this into their codes of conduct or other procurement practices.

Question 7

Financed emissions questions

Accepted Answer

For banks, financial institutions, and insurers, understanding a vendor’s capability to measure, analyze, and help you take action on financed emissions is a critical piece of the overall sustainability picture. Ask for evidence of your prospective vendor’s experience in managing financed emissions.

Can the product produce PCAF-aligned financed emissions estimates for individual assets while providing the ability to improve PCAF scores via additional data points?

PCAF is affiliated with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and is the standard-setter for financed emissions measurements. If you’re required to do a financed emissions measurement, it’s likely you’ll want to measure that in line with PCAF, and you should choose a partner with experience and expertise in the complexities of those measurements.

How does the product collect financed emissions data from portfolio companies?

The best products have a “survey” or portal functionality where portfolio companies can log-in to their own version of the software and respond to questions (e.g. ESG assessments, emissions data, target setting) as determined by the firm. These data points flow into broader financed emissions measurements, required reports like SFDR, and sustainability target tracking.

Question 8

Security questions

Accepted Answer

At the end of the day, sustainability data is still your data—and ensuring it’s secure, private, and access-controlled is essential. Before you make a vendor decision, ensure the proper security and privacy measures are in place to protect your data.

What security controls and privacy do you have?

Calculating actionable carbon footprints requires detailed business operations and financial data, so it’s critical that both the software product and the company delivering the product meet the necessary bar for security practices.

While it’s possible to send security surveys and ask detailed questions, it’s also fair to expect proactive measures, like a SOC 2 Type II audit report, and dedicated roles in the company for security.

You’ll also want to make sure that the software you’re choosing can fit in with your existing identity and access tools, like single sign on (SSO) providers, and that you are able to manage access and permissions in a way that makes sense for your business.

QUALIFYING QUESTIONS
1	Is your company publicly traded?
2	Are you subject to more than one sustainability disclosure requirement?
3	Are you looking for a detailed assessment of your company’s environmental impact, such as at the level of individual business units, suppliers, or product lines (as compared to a high-level estimate for your entire business)?
4	Do you have any previous environmental assessments (carbon footprints, LCAs, custom emissions factors) that you will need to incorporate into your current footprint?
5	Do you have a defined budget for your sustainability program?
6	Do you have any other specific needs or preferences when it comes to a sustainability platform?

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