If you supply the resources sector in Western Australia, there’s a good chance you’ve received a request for carbon footprint data.
A major mining or energy client, or one of their procurement platforms, asking for your emissions data, your energy use, your fuel records. Often with a short deadline and a questionnaire that makes little sense when it arrives out of the blue.
It can feel like an unreasonable ask. You’re a crane hire company, a maintenance contractor, a transport operator, not a listed miner. Why is their reporting suddenly your problem?
Here’s the short answer: it isn’t going away, and how you respond will increasingly affect whether you keep winning their work.
Why this is happening now
Australia’s largest companies, including the big miners and energy producers, are now legally required to report their climate-related risks and emissions each year.
Directors sign off on these reports the same way they sign off on financial statements.
The catch for suppliers is that these companies must report not only their own emissions, but the emissions generated across their supply chain. That includes the diesel in your fleet, the power in your workshop and the flights your team takes to site.
In other words, your carbon footprint data is now part of your customer’s compliance obligation. If you can’t provide it, they must estimate it, and estimates create risk for them when the auditors arrive. Companies don’t like carrying risk on behalf of their suppliers.
What it means for your contracts
We’re already seeing this play out in WA procurement.
Supplier pre-qualification platforms and tender scorecards now routinely include emissions and sustainability questions alongside safety and insurance.
A blank answer doesn’t just look vague; it can flag that you as harder to deal with and may mean they start to look elsewhere.
The practical risks are straightforward:
- Long-standing client relationships come under pressure if you can’t respond to data requests
- Tenders become harder to win when competitors can provide credible numbers, and you can’t
- Large clients would rather quietly shift work to suppliers who make their reporting easier
None of this requires you to be a perfect environmental performer. It requires you to know your numbers and be able to explain them simply.
The good news
You already have most of the data and there are some cost-effective solutions to help you pull it together.
This is the part that surprises most business owners. The information your clients are asking for largely already exists in your accounting system. Your fuel purchases, electricity bills, flights and vehicle costs are sitting in your general ledger right now.
A carbon baseline is essentially a translation exercise, converting those existing records into emissions figures using recognised methods.
For most small and mid-sized suppliers, the first measurement is far less painful than expected.
A sensible starting sequence looks like this:
- Pull together 12 months of fuel, power and travel records from your accounting system
- Have your footprint measured properly so the numbers stand up to scrutiny
- Build a simple standard pack you can send whenever a client questionnaire arrives, rather than starting from scratch each time
Once that pack exists, a request that used to cause a week of internal panic becomes a same-day reply.
Why your lender is watching too
This isn’t only a customer issue.
Banks are increasingly factoring climate risk into how they assess business lending, particularly for businesses exposed to the resources sector. A supplier that can show it understands its emissions and has a plan to manage energy and fuel costs, presents as a better-managed, lower-risk borrower.
There’s also a timing point worth knowing.
Mandatory reporting is rolling down the chain. Larger private companies begin reporting from mid-2026, with the next tier to follow in 2027. Some WA contractors and suppliers who think of themselves as “too small for all this” will find themselves in scope sooner than they expect. Getting your data in order now means you’re ready either way.
Turning a compliance chore into an edge
The suppliers doing this well aren’t treating it as paperwork.
They’re using it commercially. They respond to client questionnaires quickly and in plain English. They reference their emissions data in tenders. They use the measurement process to find genuine cost savings, because fuel and energy waste shows up very clearly once you measure it.
In a market where every competitor can hire the same cranes or run the same trucks, being the supplier who makes a client’s reporting easy is a real point of difference.
Ready to build your plan?
At Collage & Co, we help businesses turn carbon data into practical transition planning that supports commercial outcomes, not just compliance. Whether you’ve just completed your first carbon footprint or you’re preparing for lender and customer scrutiny, we bring the strategy, the process, and the right tools to make it manageable.
To talk through what a proportionate transition plan looks like for your business, reach out to the team at Collage & Co at info@collageandco.com.au or contact Ledge Finance to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are emissions, in simple terms?
Emissions are the greenhouse gases released when your business uses energy. Every litre of diesel burnt, every kilowatt of electricity used, and every flight taken produces a measurable amount. Measuring your emissions simply means adding up that activity across the business and converting it into a single, comparable figure, usually expressed in tonnes of carbon.
What are Scope 3 emissions and why do they keep coming up?
Emissions are grouped into three categories:
- Scope 1 is what your business burns directly, like fuel in your vehicles and equipment.
- Scope 2 is the electricity you buy.
- Scope 3 is everything else in your value chain, including the goods and services you purchase and, importantly, the emissions of your suppliers.
When a big mining or energy client asks for your carbon data, it’s because your emissions count as part of their Scope 3. That’s the whole reason these requests are landing in your inbox.
We’re a small business. Do we really have to do this?
There’s no law requiring most small suppliers to report yet. But your largest clients are legally required to report, and they can’t do that without data from their supply chain. In practice, the pressure arrives through contracts and tenders long before it arrives through legislation.
Will a rough estimate do, or does it need to be measured properly?
Estimates were acceptable a few years ago. Increasingly they’re not, because your client’s numbers get audited and shaky supplier data weakens their report. A properly measured baseline, built from your actual records, holds up to scrutiny and only needs to be done once a year.
How long does it take to get a baseline together?
For most small and mid-sized suppliers, a few weeks. With the help of software, like Trace, most of your information will already sit in your accounting system. It is far less disruptive that a safety certification or quality audit. And you using this process you demonstrate you are using best practice and current information.
What happens if we just ignore the requests?
Nothing immediately. Over time, though, non-responding suppliers become harder for procurement teams to justify. The risk isn’t a fine, it’s quietly losing work to a competitor who could answer the question.
