Net-Zero Ambition Assessment Tool (NZAAT)

The need for an SME-friendly GHG status assessment tool

Customers / purchasers are accountable for the carbon footprints of purchased products in the year of their acquisition. Suppliers’ scope 1, 2, and 3 GHG emissions contribute to product carbon footprints (see above). So, customers want to buy from suppliers who are doing the most to reduce their GHG emissions.

There are several good questionnaires that be used to score suppliers’  commitment to, and progress toward, science-based net-zero targets and to circularity (e.g., CDP, UN’s Race to Zero, SBTi, Canada’s Net-Zero Challenge).  Primarily, these frameworks are designed for use by large suppliers. However, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) comprise over 99% of the companies on the planet. We need an SME-friendly, yet comprehensive, assessment tool: Net-Zero Ambition Assessment Tool (NZAAT).

Net-zero Ambition Assessment Tool (NZAAT)

Resource extraction and production of new goods are responsible for 45% of global GHG emissions. Repairing and refurbishing products can cut global GHG emissions by 39%. Net-zero ambition and circular design ambition are symbiotic. That’s why Net-Zero Ambition Assessment Tool (NZAAT) assesses both.

NZAAT is a generic, SME-friendly self-assessment tool. It is comprehensive – it is based on questions asked by other questionnaires that assess a company’s commitment to net-zero targets (see the  Comparison – Net-Zero Questionnaires). It uses multiple-choice questions to score the organization’s commitment to, and progress toward, science-based net-zero targets and to circularity.  

The free Excel version of the tool is downloadable here. It is an open-source tool, so feel free to tailor it to better suit your purposes, translate it into other languages, change question weightings, change scoring formulas, use it as a base for an online app, integrate elements of it into your current tools, etc.

Note: Do not try to use this Excel workbook in Google Sheets. Unfortunately, all checkboxes are stripped out by Google Sheets, so formatting and many calculations don’t work.

Consolidating and analyzing NZAAT results: There is a hidden Summary worksheet in NZAAT, just after the Scores worksheet, that echoes 50+ data points in the completed survey. Excel’s Power Query capability can consolidate those Summary worksheets from all returned surveys. Here’s how:

  • Place all the returned NZAATs in a dedicated folder.
  • Unhide the summary worksheet in the first NZAAT file in that folder.
  • Create a new Excel workbook for the consolidated NZAAT results.
  • Use Power Query to consolidate the Summary worksheets from all the returned NZAAT in that new workbook.

Power Query will use a separate row for each Summary worksheet’s 50+ data points.
Then you can use Excel’s Pivot Table function or Power BI to analyze the consolidated results, generate reports, and create dashboard charts.

There are several good YouTube videos on Power Query, Pivot Tables, and Power BI that provide helpful guidance on all this.

Scope 1 and 2 Action Planning Worksheet

This worksheet can be used to prioritize 25+ actions to improve performance on reducing Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gases (GHGs). Users check all actions that would be good candidates for their organization to undertake. They use the dropdown menus beside each action to estimate the action’s % GHG reduction possibilities, the timeframe for the action, and the range of capital funds required for that action. Then, they short list those actions that are short-term. The worksheet is available here.

Comparison of potential online equivalents of NZAAT

NZAAT is a good Excel-based, SME-friendly, supplier GHG questionnaire. However, an online, digitized equivalent of NZAAT may be required if it were to be used with hundreds or thousands of suppliers. I have done a side-by-side comparison of how six online supplier GHG questionnaires provided by CDP, Cority, EcoVadis, Persefoni, Salesforce, and Sphera meet 24 desired criteria for an online, rapidly-scalable version of NZAAT. The comparison uses a bid appraisal-like format to facilitate selection of the offering that best meets a particular buyer’s needs. The comparison is available here.

NZAAT slides 

The Master – Assessment Frameworks slide deck is one of the six slide decks available to Master Slide Decks subscribers. Because NZAAT was created to assess a company’s net-zero and circularity ambitions, its overview is in that deck.