Carbon SAQ
Measure supplier carbon maturity at factory level
Grade how well each of your suppliers manages its own carbon, with real evidence behind every answer
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The Carbon SAQ, our carbon self-assessment questionnaire, is a factory-level assessment of supplier carbon management.
- A supplier answers 35 questions on the EiQ platform and uploads evidence against each one.
- An LRQA reviewer then checks that evidence, and raises queries with the supplier where it does not support the answer given.
- The site is then scored and graded, producing a report for each site and the distribution of grades across your base.
Few suppliers have structured carbon management in place
Most buyers with a public commitment covering supply chain emissions are working from a figure modelled on procurement spend. But it cannot be checked at source, it does not move when an individual supplier improves, and it will not hold up in front of a lender or an assurance provider who asks how the number was reached.
Across the factories LRQA has assessed, seven in ten have limited or no structured carbon management. A spend-based model gives you one figure for everything you buy – but it won’t tell you which of your suppliers can measure and target their emissions, and which have not started.
Why supplier carbon data is being asked for now
CDP, the global environmental disclosure system, puts corporate supply chain emissions at, on average, 26 times a company's direct operational emissions. Yet only 15 percent of disclosing companies are targeting their value chains in their emissions reduction work.
- One trigger is finance. A sustainability-linked facility needs a performance metric a lender and a second-party opinion provider will accept, which means something measured outside the company, checked against evidence, and reported the same way each year.
- Another is disclosure pressure. A buyer reporting supply chain emissions needs data back from its suppliers. The Carbon SAQ is aligned to CDPand is built for suppliers that aren't yet able to answer a full disclosure request.
How a grade is built
The 35 questions cover what a factory measures, what it has committed to reducing, what it has done about it, and how it manages climate resilience.Questions carry different point values by importance, weighted into four areas:
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What you receive
- A graded report for each site, with the score in every area and written recommendations the factory can act on
- A question-by-question record showing where evidence was provided and where it was not
- Normalised emissions per unit of product, per employee and per unit of revenue, and the share attributed to you based on revenue
- The grade distribution across your base
Each assessment runs against a defined reporting year, repeating annually so you can report movement from one year to the next.
Part of the ERSA assessment family
The Carbon SAQ is the carbon member of the ERSA family, our Enhanced Responsible Sourcing Assessment standard, which covers labour, health and safety, environment and carbon on one platform through one assessor network. If you already run ERSA assessments, your suppliers can add the Carbon SAQ on the platform they already use, with nothing new to register for.
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