Why CO₂ data is appearing in offers today

And yet, some offers now include an additional piece of information. Rarely right at the beginning, sometimes only in a data sheet or as an additional line. A figure that was not there before: CO₂.

Anyone reading such offers quickly notices that this figure is rarely just decoration. Nor is it usually a spontaneous idea from the sales department. Rather, it reflects a development that has been building across value chains for some time: emissions data is increasingly being requested wherever companies need to compare, select and document. CDP, one of the most important platforms for environmental and climate data, states that around 45,000 suppliers were requested to disclose information via its Supply Chain Programme in 2025, with more than 270 major purchasing companies involved. CDP explicitly describes this data as the basis for standardised, comparable information in procurement, risk management and compliance.

What starts in Brussels ends up in offers

The path from regulation to offers is shorter than it may seem at first glance. With the CSRD and the European ESRS, companies subject to reporting requirements must not only report on their own emissions, but also on emissions in the upstream and downstream value chain. The climate standard ESRS E1 requires, among other things, information on Scope 3 emissions, the reporting boundaries applied, and the methods and tools used. Companies must also disclose the extent to which emissions are based on primary data from suppliers or other value chain partners. EFRAG has also published its own implementation guidance on the value chain, because obtaining this data is considered difficult in practice.

At first, this sounds like a reporting obligation for large companies. In practice, however, its impact reaches much further. Companies that have to report need data from others. And companies that need this data from others sooner or later begin to include it in requests, qualification questionnaires, supplier assessments or offers. Not always as a mandatory field. Often, the expectation alone is enough: reliable information should, in principle, be available. This is one reason why CO₂ data no longer appears only in sustainability reports, but increasingly in documents that used to be shaped mainly by procurement, engineering and sales.

The difference is not in the figure, but in its context

What is interesting is that CO₂ data rarely decides an offer on its own. The figure works differently. First, it changes the way the document is read. Once it is there, the next question immediately follows: How was it calculated? Does it refer to “cradle to gate”, meaning from raw material extraction to the factory gate? Or to “cradle to grave”, meaning all the way to the end of the product’s life? Is it a complete Product Carbon Footprint or only a partial assessment? This is exactly where a figure becomes a technical point of scrutiny.

There have long been methodological guidelines for this. ISO 14067 describes principles, requirements and guidelines for quantifying and reporting the carbon footprint of a product and explicitly links this to the logic of life cycle assessment under ISO 14040 and 14044. The GHG Protocol Product Standard was also developed precisely for this purpose: to capture and make comparable emissions across the entire product life cycle. In practice, the problem is therefore usually not a complete lack of methodology, but its inconsistent application. Two CO₂ values only appear comparable if system boundaries, data depth and assumptions are also taken into account.

Why procurement is suddenly taking a closer look

The programmes emerging around data exchange show that this topic is no longer merely theoretical. CDP openly promotes standardised supplier data to procurement teams as a way to better identify risks, make more informed sourcing decisions and improve supply chain performance. In a recent case description, for example, Bosch is said to use primary supplier-specific data via CDP to support long-term sourcing decisions and strategic considerations. Lenovo, in turn, reports a supplier response rate of 98 percent in the CDP process and states that around 70 percent of participating suppliers report Scope 3 data; 96 percent of suppliers by procurement spend already had public emission reduction targets. These are no longer academic exercises, but signs of how strongly data expectations have already grown in some supply chains.

There is also a second development that is likely to become even more important for SMEs: technical data exchange at product level. The WBCSD initiative PACT has been working for years to make standardised emissions data exchangeable along product value chains. The aim is not just another report, but a harmonised system that enables companies to pass on Product Carbon Footprint data across several stages. WBCSD and the companies involved explicitly describe this step as a prerequisite for more granular and comparable data in the supply chain. According to Fujitsu, the company has already used such a PACT-compliant approach to link PCF data across several supplier tiers for notebook production.

What this means for offers

None of this means that every offer will have to include a CO₂ value tomorrow. Change is not happening that fast. But it does explain why the figure is appearing at all. It is there because other systems can now process it: reporting systems, supplier portals, qualification processes and procurement comparison logic. An offer with CO₂ data does not automatically appear better. At first, it appears more compatible.

That is an important distinction. Today, companies compete not only on price, quality and delivery times, but increasingly also on how well their information fits into higher-level requirements. A CO₂ value that has been derived using a sound methodology and can be reproduced if necessary can be used further. One that is only roughly estimated or not documented, on the other hand, often creates more questions than relief. That is why technical work on Product Carbon Footprints is not just a calculation exercise. It determines whether a figure can appear in a document without collapsing again in the next conversation.

Not a small shift

This is by no means widespread yet. Many sectors still work with offers in which CO₂ does not appear at all. And many customers are not yet asking for it, or only very selectively. But the infrastructure in which such data is processed is already being built: through regulation, disclosure programmes, methodological standards and new exchange formats. Anyone looking only at the moment when a single request arrives may easily see it as an exception. Anyone looking at the programmes behind it is more likely to see a trend.

CO₂ data is therefore not suddenly appearing in offers because companies want to communicate more sustainably overnight. It is appearing there because the requirements for comparability have shifted in the background. And because figures that used to end up in reports are now increasingly landing where decisions are prepared.