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It’s now widely accepted that a changing environment brings real commercial risk, one that businesses can’t continue to sideline. Our idea of ‘business as usual’ must adapt. In the past, ‘low carbon’ credentials were treated as a mark of good practice, a welcome bonus, but rarely a deciding factor next to competitive pricing. This is quickly changing.

Words Without Action Now Fall Short

More and more firms are broadcasting their valued ESG principles, which may have worked to build a good reputation for some, but it has blurred the line between illusion and impact. Amid scrutiny in supply chains and new evidence requirements in the procurement process, competition for contracts is a continuous challenge. The gap between self-reported social values and externally verified accreditation has become increasingly obvious to those preparing tenders, often determining whether a contract is won or lost.

Put simply: the businesses that show up with verified third-party accreditation are scoring higher than the businesses that show up with just a well-written paragraph. This is being driven largely by advances in Net Zero targets, Sustainability Reporting Standards (SRS), and Procurement Policy Notes (PPN). Pressure is building at every point of the supply chain to embed comprehension and accountability into carbon emissions. Accreditation now delivers a genuine competitive edge, and the evidence is increasingly clear.

It’s Already Working at Scale

Public bodies are making Carbon Literate Organisation (CLO) accreditation a mandatory tender condition across the UK. Contract winners are pursuing accreditation at every level: Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum (Find out more about CLO accreditation). The Lower Thames Crossing, operated by National Highways, is the clearest proof of concept. National Highways made Silver CLO accreditation a necessary tender condition, requiring all three of their delivery partners to achieve it within 52 weeks of award.

All three hit Silver CLO, and National Highways itself went further, achieving Gold. None of this required reinventing existing frameworks: Carbon Literacy sat alongside Carbon Management schemes (PAS2080) and Science Based Targets (SBTi) commitments already in place, rather than competing with them.

DESNZ, the Crown Commercial Service, and local authorities, including Hackney and Southend-on-Sea, have also built Carbon Literacy into evaluation criteria for winning bids.

Driven by Structural Policy Change

Though often sounding like technical rebrands, even subtle policy changes have wide-reaching implications.

Within the framework of the Procurement Act 2023, ‘Most Advantageous Tender’ (MAT) has replaced ‘Most Economically Advantageous Tender’ (MEAT). Under MEAT, environmental and social performance were softly ‘considered’ alongside a cost-led assessment. Now, under MAT, the word “economically” has been deliberately dropped: environmental and social performance are treated as legitimate evaluation criteria sitting directly alongside price, not subordinate to it. This means a bidder with weak evidence to support their environmental sustainability is now losing marks it can’t win back on cost alone.

Also within the Procurement Act 2023, the Social Value Act mandates public sector buyers to consider social, economic, and environmental benefits in procurement, aiming to deliver wider societal impacts beyond cost.

CLO status is evidence of structural buy-in, proof that your workforce understands industrial carbon emissions well enough to be able to reduce them. The higher the CLO status, the stronger your case for buy-in, and the stronger your Social Value Act compliance.

Spotlighting Business: Stories of Success

Committing to knowledge-share across your supply chain will quickly advance your CLO status (Silver to Gold, Gold to Platinum, etc.) and will build capacity for lower-carbon operations throughout industries and institutions. Ecosurety and BOBST show what this looks like in practice: in steps toward Gold and Platinum CLO status respectively, both have created sector-specific Carbon Literacy training courses tailored to their core member and supplier bases.

Ecosurety has trained 75 individuals from 39 organisations across the packaging sector to become Carbon Literate with their own bespoke course tailored to its member and supplier base. Training their suppliers, they say, helps them take a proactive step towards improving Scope 3 impact, which accounts for 97.7% of their total emissions.

BOBST, whilst training 80% of its own workforce in under two years, has extended this to one of its key suppliers, Arden Dies, hosting Carbon Literacy training with a bespoke course. By training its partners, BOBST is improving its own environmental performance and, ultimately, its commercial appeal to further buyers down the line.

Spotlighting Government: Manchester Carbon Literate City

PPN 002 of the Procurement Act 2023 pushes further, mandating a social value model across central government procurement with defined weightings. Some authorities are running social value at 15–20% of the overall score; a few, including Manchester City Council, at 30%.

“The weighting for Social Value is increasing and quite consistently now at 20%. It is becoming in many instances the determining factor in who wins a contract.” Terry Brewer, Head of Public Sector Delivery, Social Value Portal

If a 20–30% social value weighting sounds abstract, Manchester City Council demonstrates the effect this has at full scale. As an influential authority in the city region, and one that so many other firms compete to win bids from, its frameworks and attitudes spread like a root system across public and private sectors. Combined with its high social value weighting, this passes environmental commitments down through the city’s supply chains.

MCC has made waves by becoming the first Council in the UK to achieve Gold CLO status. This is a leap toward Net Zero by 2038, and a part of their encouraging choice to set emissions ambitions well ahead of the national average.

More than half of the people working for the Council and associated bodies are certified Carbon Literate, including 90% of senior officers and councillors. In total, Manchester City Council and its associates have almost 4,000 employees who have completed Carbon Literacy training, the most of any council in the country (as of March 2025).

“We have also launched and are actively supporting the Manchester Carbon Literate City initiative, which aims to be another UK first for Manchester: the first city where 15 per cent of people who live, work and study here will have been certified as Carbon Literate.” Councillor Tracey Rawlins, Executive Member for Environment, Manchester City Council

Manchester’s trajectory is not an outlier; it’s a preview. As MAT, the Social Value Act, and PPN 002 embed themselves further into procurement practice, the authorities and buyers setting the pace today are the ones defining tomorrow’s baseline expectation. Suppliers who treat Carbon Literacy as a compliance afterthought will find themselves competing on price alone against firms who no longer have to.

Next Steps to CLO Accreditation and Procurement Advice

Whether you’re seeking further gains in your Social Value, needing to understand how to cut emissions in your supply chain, or simply looking to win more contracts from your competitors, see how Carbon Literate Organisation accreditation can benefit your business.

To support organisations and localities looking to take this forward, a briefing document is available to bring together key insights and approaches:

Download the Carbon Literacy for Net Zero Procurement briefing paper.

And if you want to get ahead of the competition in the approaching wave of procurement opportunities, contact us or browse open courses and toolkits by industry.