Criterion B.4 - Stakeholder engagement of external stakeholders

After the project leader and internal stakeholders have built up their expertise on energy and climate issues, a complete Bilan Carbone® approach that enables deep decarbonisation of an organisation's activities requires working with its entire upstream and downstream value chain (i.e. suppliers and customers).

For this reason, candidate tools are expected to provide the elements necessary to engage (and/or build the competence of) suppliers and customers on the issue of reducing GHG emissions as well as on low-carbon transition challenges.

The link with external stakeholders is essential not only to improve the quality of an organisation's carbon accounting, but also to make the decarbonisation strategy — which will have an impact on the entire value chain — even more robust.

One example of this link is the typology of actions with the highest relevance level according to the Bilan Carbone® method:

• Reduction actions at the core of the organisation's activity: the organisation is entirely responsible for the action and its impacts;
• Reduction actions within the organisation's value chain: the organisation can control the impacts of the action as part of its value chain;
• Reduction actions outside the organisation's value chain: the organisation is dependent and therefore cannot fully control the impacts of the action that lies outside its value chain.

Criterion

Mandatory	Criterion B.4 - Stakeholder Engagement of External Stakeholders
Question	Does the candidate tool make it possible to engage (and/or build the competence of) external stakeholders (suppliers and customers)?
Answers	Yes, the candidate tool facilitates the stakeholder engagement of all upstream and downstream external stakeholders Yes, the candidate tool facilitates the stakeholder engagement of some external stakeholders, upstream or downstream No, the candidate tool does not provide any awareness-raising / stakeholder engagement of internal stakeholders throughout its user journey
Implementation guidance	If the elements ensuring competence-building are not directly accessible within the candidate tool, request the transmission of everything that can reflect this approach (awareness-raising materials, questionnaires sent, template emails, etc.) Look for the presence of features enabling the stakeholder engagement of service providers, suppliers and other external stakeholders, such as role management or a supplier questionnaire. Look for the presence of support for engaging external stakeholders, for example through assistance with making contact or communicating carbon information.