A lender sent us a TCFD-style climate questionnaire. How does a small company answer it honestly?
Answer each of the four TCFD pillars in proportion to your size: who oversees climate issues, which climate risks affect your business, how you manage them, and your emissions with any targets. Give measured figures where you have them, say plainly where you have nothing yet, and add a date by which you will.
The four pillars and 11 disclosures
The TCFD handed its monitoring role to the ISSB in 2023, and IFRS S2 builds on the same structure, so lenders keep using it.
- Governance: board oversight of climate issues; management's role.
- Strategy: risks and opportunities over short, medium and long term; their impact on the business and financial planning; resilience under different climate scenarios.
- Risk management: how you identify and assess climate risks; how you manage them; how this fits your overall risk process.
- Metrics and targets: the metrics you use; Scope 1, Scope 2 and, if appropriate, Scope 3 emissions; your targets and progress.
Proportionate answers for a small firm
- Governance: name the director or partner responsible and how often climate comes up, even if it is once a quarter.
- Strategy: list two or three real risks, such as CBAM or buyer carbon requests on exports, heat or flood at the site, and power price changes.
- Scenarios: a short qualitative note on what a high carbon price or a hotter climate would mean for you is acceptable at your scale.
- Risk management: say whether climate is in your risk register; if not, say when it will be.
Metrics: give numbers you can back up
- Scope 1 from fuel invoices and slips, Scope 2 from electricity bills, each with the factor and source.
- An intensity figure the lender can compare, such as tonnes CO2 per crore of revenue or per tonne of product.
- Mark Scope 3 as not yet measured if that is true, rather than guessing.
- Keep the documents behind each figure; a lender may ask for them before disbursal.
What not to do
- Copy a large company's TCFD text; reviewers notice.
- Claim a net zero target with no plan or interim steps behind it.
- Leave questions blank. "Not yet assessed, planned for the next financial year" is a better answer.
Worked example: the metrics answer
- Grid electricity: 480,000 kWh x 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh = 340,800 kg, 340.8 t CO2 (Scope 2)
- Diesel: 24,000 litres x 2.68 kg CO2 per litre = 64,320 kg, 64.3 t CO2 (Scope 1)
- Total Scope 1 and 2: 405.1 t CO2
- Revenue ₹40 crore: 405.1 / 40 = about 10.1 t CO2 per crore
What Senseible does here
Senseible calculates Scope 1 and 2 from your invoices and bills with the factor and source on each line, which answers the metrics pillar, and its green loan readiness check shows gaps a lender may raise. It does not write your governance, strategy or scenario answers.
Sources: TCFD Final Report: Recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (June 2017), IFRS S2 Climate-related Disclosures (ISSB, June 2023)
Last reviewed 2026-10-15.