Illustrative scenario: asking 60 suppliers for their emissions data

The starting point

The company in this scenario makes forged and machined components for vehicle manufacturers, from three plants. It is in the top 250 listed companies, so from FY 2025-26 it may report on its value chain partners — voluntarily — in its BRSR¹. Two of its largest customers have also started asking for its Scope 3 emissions. It has never asked a supplier for emissions data.

Choosing whom to ask

The sustainability lead starts with last year's purchase ledger: 410 suppliers, ₹1,180 crore of purchases.

• Value chain partners under the 2% rule. Eleven suppliers are each 2% or more of purchases by value; together they are 46% of purchases. They become the BRSR value chain partners, and the disclosure will say that they cover 46%¹.
• Scope 3 hotspots. Ranking the rest by spend and likely emissions intensity adds 49 more: steel and aluminium suppliers below the 2% line, heat-treatment job workers, and the two logistics firms that carry finished goods.

Sixty suppliers in all. The remaining 350 — packaging, consumables, services — stay on spend-based estimates this year.

Asking for four things

The request is deliberately short. Each supplier is asked for:

1. Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions for its last full year, with the method and whether they were verified;
2. Revenue for the same year;
3. If it has one, a product-level figure — kg CO₂e per kg of the part or material supplied;
4. For the eleven partners, the BRSR indicators the company will report on their behalf.

Each supplier gets a private link to a one-page form, a four-week deadline, and the name of a person to call. Reminders go out three days before the deadline and after it. Two short online sessions explain what Scope 1 and 2 mean, for suppliers who have never calculated them.

What comes back

After six weeks:

The 22 without answers are estimated from spend with industry-average factors, and flagged for follow-up next year.

Allocating and scoring

Where a supplier gives totals, its emissions are allocated by the company's share of its revenue; where it gives a product figure, that figure is multiplied by the quantity bought instead — which avoids assuming every product carries the supplier's average intensity². Allocated totals cover only the supplier's own Scope 1 and 2, so the team adds a secondary estimate for the steel suppliers' upstream inputs and says so.

Each answer is scored for quality — product-level and verified at the top, spend-based estimates at the bottom — and the report states the share of category 1 that rests on supplier-specific data, with a target to raise it next year.

What the team learns

1. Small, clear requests get answers. Four questions on one page were enough for 38 of the 60 suppliers to answer.
2. The first year is about the method. Next year, suppliers who answered see their previous answer and only update it.
3. Product figures beat allocations. The nine product-level answers are the ones worth building on with the key material suppliers.
4. Say what is estimated. A clear split between supplier data and estimates is more credible than one precise-looking total.

How this would run in ESGTrack

In ESGTrack, each supplier would answer through a private link with its evidence, reminders would go out before and after the due date, a supplier who answers several customers could reuse one profile through the supplier network, and the allocation and the BRSR value chain disclosure would follow from the answers. See supplier and value-chain data and our guide to collecting ESG data from sites and suppliers.