Carbon accounting for manufacturers. Audit-ready, tender-ready.
Most of a manufacturer’s footprint is upstream, in the materials you buy, not on a meter you can read. ESGen measures the whole picture and turns it into the answers your customers now ask for.
Impacts
Manufacturing generates a significant amount of carbon, and accounting for it is genuinely hard. Three numbers set the context.
The EU's Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism enters its definitive phase. Importers of steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen, and electricity surrender certificates priced on embedded emissions.
The UK has announced its own CBAM, covering a similar set of carbon-intensive sectors. Manufacturers selling into both markets face two certificate regimes.
Categories of Scope 3 emissions in the GHG Protocol. For most manufacturers the largest is Category 1, the goods and materials you purchase.
Barriers to accurate carbon reporting
For most of the last decade, carbon reporting in manufacturing was a disclosure exercise. Something the sustainability team produced once a year, reviewed by the board, and filed with the annual report. The number mattered, but it did not affect the order book.
That has changed on three fronts at once.
CBAM turns your emissions into your customer’s cost.From 2026, EU importers of covered goods surrender certificates priced against the EU carbon market, calculated on the emissions embedded in each consignment. Importers who cannot produce verified data fall back to default values, and defaults rarely flatter anyone. The UK has announced its own version for 2027. If you sell steel, aluminium, cement or products made from them into those markets, your data now sets someone’s bill.
Product footprint requests are in the sales inbox. Per-product carbon figures have moved from a nice-to-have into standard procurement questionnaires. Customers with their own CSRD or SBTi commitments need to know the embedded carbon in the goods they buy, and they are shortlisting suppliers accordingly.
Your customers must now report your emissions. CSRD and UK SRS require in-scope companies to disclose their value chain. Their Scope 3 is your Scope 1 and 2, so the data request lands with you whether you are in scope yourself or not, and it has to hold up to their assurance provider, not just yours.
The manufacturers who can produce a traceable, defensible carbon number for every product, every entity, and every year are the ones winning the bids the others are losing.
Where the footprint actually sits
A typical manufacturer’s emissions, category by category. Select a segment to see what drives it.
Purchased materials
Steel, aluminium, plastics and components carry embedded emissions from their own production, usually the single largest share of the footprint.
Illustrative of a typical profile. Your own measurement sets the real shares.
Why ESGen
One inventory across every site, entity, and ERP
Manufacturing data lives in plants, subsidiaries, and supplier records that rarely share a format. ESGen brings it into a single inventory where every number traces back to its entity, its emission factor, and the method that produced it.
Scope 3 Category 1, with the evidence attached
Purchased goods and services is where a manufacturer's footprint concentrates and where reviewers ask the most questions. Each calculation carries its factor version, data source, and method as the inventory is built, not reconstructed before submission.
Product footprints from the bill of materials
A product carbon footprint request needs BOM data, the right factors, and a method that survives your customer's own review. ESGen builds the figure from the materials you already track and keeps the workings with it.
Collect once, answer everyone
Pick an output and watch which parts of the inventory feed it. The work is collecting the rows. The answers are then a mapping, not a new project.
What you collect
What it produces
Built from the bill of materials, with supplier data replacing averages where it matters.
Questions from manufacturing teams
Do we need product-level footprints or a corporate one?
It depends who is asking. A CSRD or SECR obligation is corporate. A customer tender is often product-level. ESGen can build both from the same underlying inventory.
How do we get emissions data from suppliers?
ESGen collects it directly through supplier questionnaires, targeting the categories that carry most of the footprint first rather than surveying everyone at once.
Can we start before we have supplier data?
Yes. Spend and activity-based estimates give you a complete first picture and show where the material categories are. Primary data then replaces the estimates over time.
Carbon insight that reaches the order book
One inventory behind your CBAM answers, product footprints, and disclosures. Measured properly, kept defensible.