How can you get a low-cost Bilan Carbone®?

Our Bilan Carbone® pricing guide gives a range of €10,000 to €30,000 excl. VAT for a consultancy assignment lasting a few months. You have direct control over this amount, without even negotiating the consultant's daily rate.

The idea is simple: a consultant sells days of work. For a typical SME assignment, this means 10 to 15 days. Around 60 to 70% of this time is spent collecting data, chasing responses and coordinating: tasks that do not require climate expertise. If you take on some of this work, you automatically reduce the number of days billed. Realistic result: 30 to 50% savings.

1What lies behind a Bilan Carbone® quote

When a consultant prices an assignment, they do not look at your employee count or consult a price list by company size. They assess the number of days needed to complete the assignment and multiply it by their daily rate (€800 to €1,200 excl. VAT/day for a senior climate consultant).

Company size: a poor indicator

It is counter-intuitive, but a company with 2,000 employees, clean management accounts, centralised fleet data and a responsive CFO can cost less than an SME with 80 employees whose data is scattered across 15 departments, with disorganised accounts and an overwhelmed internal contact. Employee count is a poor indicator of price. What matters is operational complexity.

The 3 variables the consultant assesses

• The quality of your data: centralised or scattered invoices, detailed management accounts or a single "purchases" account, whether or not you track your fleet. The more structured it is, the less time the consultant spends searching and cleaning
• The level of detail required: average spend-based ratios (taking your purchase amounts and applying a factor per euro) give a useful picture; physical data (measured kWh, tonnes.km by transport mode) enables management, but costs more
• Your availability: if your CFO responds within 48 hours and accounting extracts arrive clean, the assignment moves quickly. If each follow-up takes 2 weeks, the consultant adds progress meetings, and a week's delay on the client side often costs an extra consultant day

2The 4 ways to reduce the bill

Option 1: prepare your data before the consultant arrives

This is the number one option, by far. Ask the consultant for their collection matrix as soon as you sign the quote, before even the first workshop. Then start filling it in. Here is what you can gather beforehand:

• The last 12 months' energy invoices (gas, electricity, heating oil), centralised in a folder
• The export of your management accounts by expense account for purchases; if your chart of accounts is detailed (separate accounts for each purchase category), the consultant saves whole days
• For the fleet, mileage, consumption and vehicle types; an export from the fleet manager is enough if one exists
• For business travel, the travel policy and the year's train and plane tickets, which your travel agency can often provide as an annual summary
• For freight, tonnes transported and transport modes by destination

The consultant will spend the same time on scoping and calculations, but the collection phase will shrink. Estimated saving: 3 to 5 days, or €2,500 to €6,000 excl. VAT.

Option 2: coordinate the teams yourself

The consultant spends time chasing your internal contacts, organising progress meetings and explaining the context to each contributor. This time is billed at the daily rate even though it is project coordination rather than climate expertise.

Appoint an internal contact (the finance and administration manager, the CSR manager or simply someone organised) to distribute the collection matrix, chase the CFO, organise meetings with logistics and circulate the mobility survey. The consultant provides the mobility questionnaire and analyses the results, but all internal communication and follow-ups go through your contact. Estimated saving: 1 to 3 days.

Option 3: keep the consultant focused on their actual job

A climate consultant's actual job is methodological scoping (which scopes, which assumptions, which standard), choosing emission factors (knowing which factor from ADEME's Base Empreinte to apply), analysing results (spotting inconsistencies and identifying major sources), and building the action plan (which reduction measures, what impact and what feasibility).

This is where expertise creates value, and what justifies the daily rate. Everything else (collection, data entry, follow-ups and coordination) can be taken on by your teams. The more you take on, the more the consultant focuses on what matters. Estimated saving: 1 to 2 days.

Option 4: learn the basics of Bilan Carbone®

You do not need to become an expert in carbon accounting. But understanding the fundamentals, what a scope is, how emission factors work and what a significant source is, makes you a much more effective client.

You ask the right questions during scoping, identify useful data in your systems faster, make decisions without waiting for the next meeting and challenge the consultant instead of approving everything blindly. There are fewer explanatory meetings and faster decisions: the saving in days is indirect, but it exists.

3Funding on top of your savings

The options above reduce the gross cost of the assignment. Public funding reduces your remaining cost. The two can be combined.

Bpifrance and ADEME's Diag Décarbon'Action is the main programme: a remaining cost of €6,000 excl. VAT on a €10,000 excl. VAT package, for companies with fewer than 500 employees, at least 1 year in business and no GHG inventory in the last 5 years. Other programmes include ADEME's ACT Pas-à-Pas for a low-carbon strategy, once the GHG inventory has been completed, and Bpifrance's Diag Éco-conception for a product LCA. Over 12 to 18 months, combined funding can reach €15,000 to €25,000 in public support.

4What you must not cut

You can lower the budget without affecting quality, provided you do not cut 3 areas, or you risk ending up with an unusable assessment.

Scope 3

An assessment covering only scopes 1 and 2 represents 10 to 20% of your actual footprint. Scope 3 (purchases, freight and travel) accounts for an average of 88% of a service company's emissions. A €3,000 quote that does not cover it gives you an incomplete assessment. And if your company is subject to the CSRD, an assessment without scope 3 does not even fulfil your statutory requirements; for the BEGES of a private company outside the CSRD, it remains compliant but measures only a small part of the footprint. It is better to reduce collection days than cut the scope.

The action plan

Without an action plan, an assessment often ends up in a drawer. Analysing results, identifying reduction measures and presenting them to the executive committee turns figures into decisions. A quote mentioning neither a presentation nor an action plan is incomplete, even if it looks optimised.

Methodological scoping

The choice of scope, assumptions and method (Bilan Carbone® or GHG Protocol) determines the reliability and comparability of the result. It takes a consultant a day or two, but it is the foundation for everything else. Never ask your consultant to "skip scoping to go faster".

5What to remember

Reducing the cost of a Bilan Carbone® means taking on tasks that do not require climate expertise, so the consultant focuses on what justifies their daily rate.

• Collection and coordination take up 60 to 70% of an assignment's time: taking them on internally saves you the most
• The 4 options combined bring a standard SME assignment down from 10-15 days to 7-10 consultant days, or 30 to 50% savings
• For eligible companies, Diag Décarbon'Action brings the remaining cost down to €6,000 excl. VAT; as its price is fixed, your options mainly help accelerate the assignment
• Do not cut scope 3, the action plan or methodological scoping, which make the assessment useful

The best time to optimise your Bilan Carbone® budget is before signing the quote, by structuring your data and identifying your internal contact. Each collection day saved removes €800 to €1,200 excl. VAT from the bill.

Further resources

Frequently asked questions

1Can you really reduce the cost by 50%?

Yes, in favourable cases. A company with centralised data, a responsive designated internal contact and a collection matrix prepared beforehand can reduce an assignment from 12-15 days to 7-8 days. This is documented in our assignments.

2Does it work with Diag Décarbon'Action?

Diag Décarbon'Action has a fixed price (€10,000 excl. VAT package, €6,000 excl. VAT remaining cost). Cost reduction measures do not lower the Diag price, but they accelerate the assignment and improve the quality of the result. Outside the Diag, on a conventional fixed-price assignment, the measures have their full effect.

3Which data should you prepare first?

In order of impact: 1) the management accounts export by expense account (the basis for scope 3), 2) energy invoices for the last 12 months, 3) fleet data if you have a fleet, 4) the year's train/plane tickets.

4Should you undertake training before starting an assessment?

It is not mandatory, but useful. A few hours on the basics (scopes, emission factors and significant sources) are enough to be an effective client. ADEME offers free resources, and your consultant can run an educational scoping session at the start of the assignment.

5Is SaaS cheaper than a consultancy?

On the face of it, yes (€2,000-9,000/year versus €10,000-30,000 as a one-off). But SaaS leaves you on your own with collection and calculations. Through Diag Décarbon'Action, consultancy support has a remaining cost of €6,000 excl. VAT, sometimes cheaper than an annual SaaS subscription, with an action plan and executive committee presentation included.

6What are the ways to lower the cost of a Bilan Carbone®?

The main option is to take on internally some of the 60 to 70% of assignment time spent on collection and coordination. Preparing your data before the consultant arrives (energy, management accounts export, fleet, travel and freight) saves 3 to 5 days. An internal contact who chases responses and coordinates teams saves 1 to 3, and keeping the consultant focused on scoping, emission factors, analysis and the action plan saves 1 to 2. Learning the basics accelerates decisions. An SME assignment thus falls from 10-15 days to 7-10 days, or 30 to 50% savings.

7How can you reduce costs without sacrificing quality?

By reducing collection days rather than the scope, and never cutting 3 areas. Scope 3 first: an assessment limited to scopes 1 and 2 covers only 10 to 20% of the actual footprint, with scope 3 accounting for an average of 88% of a service company’s emissions. Then the action plan, with analysis of results and a presentation to the executive committee, without which the assessment remains a report with no follow-up. Finally, methodological scoping, which takes 1 or 2 consultant days but determines the reliability and comparability of the result.

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