What does the Sedex environment self-assessment questionnaire ask about emissions?

Sedex's Environment Self-Assessment Questionnaire, launched in August 2024, asks for your environmental commitments, legal compliance, permits, management systems, Scope 1, 2 and 3 greenhouse gas emissions, and how you manage energy, waste, chemicals, air, water, biodiversity and deforestation. Answer the carbon part from twelve months of fuel and electricity bills.

Self-assessment first, audit later

The ESAQ is a form you fill in yourself on Sedex. A SMETA 4-pillar audit is different: an auditor walks your site and checks records. Your buyer can compare your ESAQ with your other Sedex questionnaires and use it in Sedex's risk tools, so treat it as the first thing they read about you. If a SMETA audit follows, the auditor may check the same records.

Why it arrived now: Sedex built the ESAQ to line up with SBTi, CDP and ISSB, and with rules your buyer faces, such as the EU's CSRD and CSDDD, Germany's supply chain act and California's SB-253 and SB-261. Your buyer needs your figures for their own filings.

Have these on your desk before you start

1. Consent to Establish and Consent to Operate from the State Pollution Control Board, hazardous waste authorisation and any groundwater permit, with expiry dates.
2. Your environmental policy, who owns it, and any target you have set.
3. Scope 1 records: DG diesel invoices and run logs, boiler or furnace fuel invoices, canteen LPG, company vehicle fuel, refrigerant top-ups.
4. Scope 2 records: every electricity connection on site for twelve months, in kWh, plus rooftop solar generation readings.
5. Scope 3: what you can estimate, such as yarn or fabric bought by weight and inbound freight by tonne-km. Where you have not calculated a category, say so plainly.

Answers that survive the audit

• Every total traces back to a bill. A round number typed from memory is the first thing an auditor questions.
• One boundary for everything: if a second shed or a job-work unit is excluded, name it and give the reason.
• Diesel bought in cash or by a contractor still counts. Find the slips.
• A solar or green power claim needs a generation meter reading or the supplier's certificate behind it.

Worked example: a knitwear unit's Scope 1 and 2 for FY 2025-26

• DG diesel 18,000 L x 2.645 kg/L = 47.6 t CO2
• Canteen and dryer LPG 6,000 kg x 2.98 kg/kg = 17.9 t CO2
• Scope 1 = 65.5 t CO2
• Grid electricity 9,00,000 kWh x 0.675 kg/kWh = 607.5 t CO2 (Scope 2, location-based)
• Scope 1 and 2 = 673.0 t CO2
• Garments shipped: 6,00,000 kg, so 673.0 t / 6,00,000 kg = 1.12 kg CO2 per kg of garments

Example figures. Electricity is 90% of this unit's total, so twelve clean months of power bills matter most. Grid factor from the CEA CO2 Baseline Database version 22.0; fuel factors from IPCC 2006 defaults.

What Senseible does here

Senseible returns Scope 1 and 2 from your electricity bills and fuel invoices with each factor and source shown, so ESAQ figures trace back to paper. Its team can draft the ESAQ answers from your verified records, you review and submit, and its checks are not an audit.

• Get your carbon number
• What a SMETA auditor checks
• Questions a customer audit asks
• Questionnaire support

Sources: Sedex, Environment Self-Assessment Questionnaire announcement (August 2024, updated March 2025), GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, CEA CO2 Baseline Database for the Indian power sector, version 22.0, IPCC 2006 Guidelines, Volume 2: Energy

Last reviewed 2026-10-29.