If you’ve worked on a tender or supplier form recently, you’ve probably noticed the questions changing slightly. Alongside the usual sections on capability, pricing and references, there’s now a block on sustainability or social value that asks for things like:

• your organisation’s carbon footprint
• a Carbon Reduction Plan, sometimes ‘in line with PPN 006 (06/21)’
• Net Zero targets and progress

For many agencies, that’s the point where the bid manager or new business lead has to go digging for information, or admit that the answers don’t really exist within the company yet.

This blog is to help make that moment less stressful. Not by turning you into climate experts, but by getting a few simple building blocks in place so you can respond to carbon questions calmly, consistently and without scrambling every time a client asks.

Why clients are asking now

There are three big shifts behind the influx of carbon questions:

1. Clients are under pressure on their own emissions

Large brands, universities, councils and the NHS have public Net Zero commitments that they have to monitor and report on. Your agency’s emissions sit inside their own Scope 3 footprint, as a supplier to their operations. That means procurement teams are expected to look at environmental performance as well as cost and quality, to ensure no negative impact on their own emissions and progress so far.

2. Public sector rules are tightening

Many central government and NHS contracts now require a Carbon Reduction Plan that follows PPN 006 (06/21) – a set of rules and processes around carbon reduction plans, put in place by the UK Government. That applies to service providers too, including digital, creative and marketing agencies, and is on track to become a standard part of the bid process for all public sector tenders.

3. ESG is no longer optional at a high level

Investors, regulators and boards are paying more attention to climate-related risks. As the expectations around emissions reporting and Net Zero targets continue to intensify, organisations want to ensure their suppliers are future-proofed when it comes to carbon reporting. Asking suppliers for carbon data is one of the easiest levers a client can pull, to get evidence that you are taking climate action seriously.

The short version: if you want to work with larger organisations or the public sector, these questions are not going away.

What people are actually asking for

The language used when requesting carbon data can sometimes feel overwhelmingly technical, but most requests boil down to a few basics.

You’ll often see questions asking for:

• Emissions data: For example your total greenhouse gas emissions for the latest reporting year, expressed in tonnes of CO₂e and often split into Scopes 1, 2 and relevant Scope 3. For an agency, that typically covers things like office energy, homeworking, commuting, business travel and key suppliers.
• A Carbon Reduction Plan: Often requested in public sector work as ‘PPN 006 (06/21) compliant’. This is a short document that sets out your baseline and current emissions, the reduction targets you’ve set, and the main actions you’re taking to achieve these targets – signed off at senior level and published on your website.
• Targets and commitments: Any Net Zero or reduction targets you’ve set, plus the timeframe. Clients want to see not just the destination (e.g. a Net Zero year) but evidence that you’re tracking progress along the way, even if that’s simply updating your footprint and plan each year.
• Policy and governance: An environmental or sustainability policy that explains your overall approach in plain language, alongside who owns it internally. Naming a responsible director or senior lead helps show this is embedded in how you run the agency, not just a statement.
• Contract-specific approach: A short explanation of how you’ll handle carbon on that particular contract, for example, minimising travel, designing lower-impact websites or events, or reducing waste in digital campaigns and production. The aim is to show you’ve thought about real-world emissions in the way you’ll deliver the work.

Seen through an agency lens, that’s not a thousand different asks. It’s really four repeatable pieces of evidence:

1. A recent organisational carbon footprint.
2. A Carbon Reduction Plan, where relevant (especially for public sector and NHS tenders).
3. A clear policy and point of ownership within your organisation.
4. A short, practical approach to carbon on the specific project itself.

Get those in place once and you’ve covered the majority of what tenders, portals and client questionnaires are looking for. Below are three simple steps on how to get started.

Step 1: Get a clear picture of your own impact

The starting point is a baseline carbon footprint for your agency.

For most creative and digital teams, that means pulling together data such as:

• office or studio energy use (or your share of a co-working space)
• homeworking and commuting behaviours
• business travel (trains, flights, taxis, mileage)
• cloud services, hosting and key software
• significant suppliers and freelancers

The goal isn’t perfection; it’s a structured, GHG-Protocol-aligned view of where your emissions actually sit, covering Scopes 1, 2 and the relevant parts of Scope 3.

Once you’ve done that based on a 12-month period, you can:

• see where the hotspots really are
• choose 3-5 sensible reduction actions
• talk about your impact with numbers, not guesswork

You can build this yourself using spreadsheets and publicly available government emissions factors, pulling in your energy, travel and spend data and converting it into tonnes of CO₂e, especially if you’re comfortable working with data and have a bit of capacity in ops or finance to own the process.

Many agencies however, use platforms like Seedling to do the heavy lifting: analysing data, aligning it with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, and having an expert review the footprint so it’s robust enough to share in bids and reports.

Either way, the important thing is that you have one source of truth you’re comfortable reusing, for every requirement that might come your way.

Step 2: Package it for bids, RFPs and PPNs

Once you’ve done the work, don’t bury it. Turn it into a small set of reusable assets that make life easier for bid managers, new business and account teams.

A one-page climate & carbon factsheet

This can be a simple PDF that includes:

• your latest emissions (with a clear reporting year)
• a short breakdown of the main sources
• any targets you’ve set and the timeframe
• key actions you’ve taken or committed to
• links to your environmental policy and Carbon Reduction Plan

You can attach this to tenders, link to it in supplier portals or adapt it as a slide in your credentials deck. You can also make this available on your website, or via a dedicated climate action/impact page.

A PPN-aligned Carbon Reduction Plan (if you need one)

If you’re bidding for central government or NHS work, it’s worth creating a Carbon Reduction Plan that follows the PPN 006 (06/21) structure from the outset.

Typically, that means:

• stating your baseline and current year emissions
• setting out your reduction targets
• listing the measures you’re taking to reduce emissions
• explaining internal responsibility and governance
• making sure the document is signed off at senior level and published on your website

You can manually pull this together from your footprint data and reduction plan, following government guidance yourself if you have capacity. Or work with an external partner, who will be able to produce the reports for you.

The key is: once it’s written, approved and published, it becomes something you can then simply upload or reference whenever it’s requested.

Step 3: Equip your team for carbon questions

None of this should live solely with ‘the sustainability person’. To avoid last-minute scrambling:

Make sure bid managers, new business leads and account directors all know:

• where the latest footprint and factsheet live
• where to find the Carbon Reduction Plan and policy
• what your standard wording is for common questions

Keep a short internal FAQ or crib sheet that covers:

• how recent your data is
• what your main focus areas are (for example, travel and energy)
• what you’re not claiming yet (for example, ‘we’re not Net Zero today; here’s what we are doing to work towards that’)

That way, when a client or portal asks, ‘Do you have a Carbon Reduction Plan?’ or ‘How will you support our Net Zero goals?’, your team can answer consistently and confidently.

Using carbon data as a quiet advantage – without greenwashing

Handled well, carbon data and reduction plans, can be more than a compliance chore.

It can help you:

• stay eligible for more opportunities, especially public sector work
• avoid being marked down on social value or ESG criteria
• build trust with clients who need partners aligned with their own climate goals

The important thing is to do this without greenwashing.

A few simple principles:

• Be honest about where you are: It’s fine to say ‘we’re at the beginning’ if that’s true, as long as you’re clear about what you’re doing next.
• Be specific: ‘We care about sustainability’ is vague; ‘We’ve measured our emissions, have a Carbon Reduction Plan in place and are prioritising travel and energy reductions’ is tangible.
• Be transparent: Include dates for your data, update them regularly (yearly at a minimum), and explain any use of offsetting clearly rather than hiding it in the small print.
• Keep the focus on reduction: Clients increasingly want to see how you’re actually lowering emissions over time, not just balancing them out with offsetting activities.
• Validate your efforts: Look for sustainability certification and validation programmes that back-up the work you have done, and provide credible reassurance to clients.

Most clients don’t expect you to have solved everything, but they do expect you to have made a start, and to not overclaim.

Getting help – where Seedling fits in

You can build a lot of this yourself if you have the time and appetite internally. But Seedling exists for teams who’d like some help.

We work with agencies and other growing organisations, by combining software and 1:1 expert support, to:

• measure full-scope, GHG-Protocol-aligned footprints
• create practical reduction plans and reports, including PPN 006 (06/21), SECR reports, B Corp Climate Transition Plans, and plenty more
• turn the outputs into clear, reusable content for tenders, supplier portals and client updates

So you end up with carbon data that feels manageable, and evidence you can stand behind whenever a client asks for it.

About Seedling | Carbon Footprinting

Carbon footprinting software & expert 1:1 support, designed to get your growing business on the path to Net Zero. We help teams measure, analyse and reduce their carbon footprint, and report for government tenders, B-Corp, SECR reports, and much more.