Carbon literacy is becoming a baseline expectation for procurement professionals. As supply chains come under growing scrutiny for their environmental impact, understanding how everyday business activities contribute to carbon emissions is becoming a practical skill.
This guide explains what carbon literacy means, how it relates to your carbon footprint, and what procurement teams can do to build climate literacy across their organisations. We also cover the certification routes offered by The Carbon Literacy Project and why carbon literacy training has specific relevance for anyone managing suppliers, contracts, or spend.
What is carbon literacy?
Carbon literacy is an awareness of how everyday activities affect climate change, combined with the ability and motivation to reduce emissions. The Carbon Literacy Project is the body that developed the concept and runs the certification scheme. They describe it as understanding the carbon costs of what we do at an individual, community, and organisational level.
Being carbon literate means you can recognise the connection between your actions and their climate impact. It also means you have the knowledge to lower your own carbon footprint and the confidence to help those around you do the same.
Climate literacy, a broader term, covers the science of how the Earth’s climate system works. Carbon literacy narrows the focus to something more actionable. More specifically, the carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions tied to specific behaviours, decisions, and operations. This distinction is useful for procurement teams. You don’t need to become a climate scientist. You need to understand the emissions profile of what your organisation buys and how to improve it.
What is a carbon footprint and what does it mean for procurement?
Before diving into certification, it’s worth grounding two terms that come up constantly in carbon literacy training: carbon footprint and the relationship between carbon emissions and climate change.
Carbon footprint definition
A carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases produced by an individual, organisation, product, or activity. Greenhouse gases are primarily carbon dioxide (CO2), but also methane, nitrous oxide, and others. It’s measured in carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e), which allow different greenhouse gases to be compared on a common scale.
For organisations, carbon footprints are typically broken down into three scopes. Scope 1 covers direct emissions from sources the organisation owns or controls, such as fuel burned in company vehicles. Scope 2 covers indirect emissions from purchased energy, like electricity, heating, or cooling. Scope 3 covers everything else in the value chain. This would be supplier manufacturing, logistics, employee commuting, business travel, waste, and the end-of-life treatment of products sold.
Scope 3 is where procurement has the greatest influence, and it’s also where most emissions sit.
Carbon footprint and climate change
Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere. When businesses, governments, and individuals emit more CO2e than natural systems can absorb, the atmosphere warms. The effects are well-documented. Rising global temperatures, more severe weather events, sea-level rises, and disruption to food and water systems.
Understanding your carbon footprint is the first step toward reducing it. And supply chains account for a large share of most organisations’ emissions. So, which suppliers you work with, how goods are transported, and what materials are specified have an outsized effect on an organisation’s total climate impact.
How do you become carbon literate?
To date, over 160,000 individuals from more than 14,000 organisations hold Carbon Literacy certification (figures subject to ongoing updates). The concept may sound academic, but the path to becoming certified is practical. But it depends on whether you’re an individual, an organisation, or a trainer.
Individual
There are two routes to individual certification. The first is to complete a day’s worth of accredited learning, which is around eight hours in total. This can take the form of e-learning, workshops, or self-directed study. It can include homework set by a certified trainer. Many people start with an accredited carbon literacy training course, and several are available online.
The second route is to arrange your own learning within your workplace. Speak to a manager or senior leader about introducing carbon literacy into the organisation.
Organisation
A carbon literate organisation (CLO) is one that The Carbon Literacy Project has accredited for its commitment to building a carbon literate workforce. There are four levels, Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum, with each reflecting a deeper commitment.
To reach Bronze, an organisation registers a training initiative that meets The Carbon Literacy Project’s criteria, and at least one of its leaders completes individual certification.
Silver requires the organisation to promote its carbon literacy publicly, publish a case study, develop carbon literacy across most of its workforce, and build carbon literacy into performance management.
Gold adds a selection requirement. The organisation picks two actions from a defined list.
- Promote carbon literacy externally.
- Deliver carbon literacy training to another organisation.
- Co-develop carbon literacy materials with another organisation that will use them independently.
- Partner with another carbon literate organisation.
- Sponsor carbon literacy for another group.
- Produce a cost-benefit study.
Platinum requires two further actions from the same list. At this stage, 80% of the workforce must also be certified.
Trainer
Trainer certification is available at three levels: Carbon Literacy Facilitator (Level 1), Carbon Literacy Trainer (Level 2), and Carbon Literacy Consultant (Level 3).
A Facilitator has experience in arranging, organising, or supporting a carbon literacy training initiative, or in delivering training face-to-face. At Level 2 and above, trainers complete assessed exercises that test their delivery and communication skills. They also receive a profile on the online training register and are given priority when projects come in through The Carbon Literacy Project.
Why procurement professionals need carbon literacy training
Carbon literacy training has specific relevance for procurement teams. The decisions you make about suppliers, contracts, and specifications directly affect your organisation’s carbon footprint across all three scopes. This is of even bigger importance with Scope 3, where the supply chain sits.
Supply chain emissions account for most of a company’s carbon footprint
Research from McKinsey indicates that in some consumer goods companies, up to around 80% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the supply chain rather than in-house operations. The energy used to grow, manufacture, process, and transport goods contributes heavily to any business’s total emissions.
When procurement professionals understand where supply chain emissions come from and how sourcing decisions affect them, they can make choices that lower the organisation’s carbon footprint at scale. This might mean specifying low-carbon materials, consolidating deliveries, or choosing suppliers who measure and report their own emissions.
Public spending demands responsible procurement
Procurement professionals in the public sector have an additional responsibility. The UK government is one of the country’s largest purchasers of goods and services, spending billions each year. The people who run these operations must account for how that money is spent. And this includes the environmental impact of what’s being bought.
Carbon literacy training gives public sector procurement teams the knowledge to ask better questions of suppliers, evaluate environmental credentials, and contribute to the government’s own emissions reduction commitments.
Net zero and Carbon Reduction Plans
The UK was the first major economy to set a legal net zero target: a 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, compared to 1990 levels. This commitment has direct consequences for procurement.
Under Procurement Policy Note 06/21 (PPN 06/21), as applied under current UK procurement rules and evolving procurement legislation suppliers bidding for government contracts valued at £5 million or more per year must submit a Carbon Reduction Plan (CRP). The CRP must confirm the supplier’s commitment to reaching net zero by 2050 and report on current greenhouse gas emissions across Scopes 1, 2, and a defined subset of Scope 3.
Failing to submit a compliant CRP can result in exclusion from the procurement process.
If you’re involved in procuring goods and services for a public body, check that your suppliers have published CRPs that meet the current requirements. And if you’re a supplier yourself, carbon literacy training will help you understand the reporting framework and build a credible plan.