SECR stands for Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting. It is a relatively new UK regulation aimed to make business emissions reporting more transparent and comparable. It requires large companies and charities to report their energy usage and their Scope 1 & 2 carbon emissions.

The reason for SECR reporting is to steer companies into making energy efficiencies and reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. The reporting is particularly useful for encouraging ownership and making more companies measure their carbon emissions.

In this article we’ll look at the companies concerned by this legislation, what information they need to provide and how and will explain what all the terminology means.

Which companies are affected by SECR?

The legislation is aimed at large companies. ‘Large’ means fulfilling 2 of these criteria:

an annual turnover of £36m+
more than £18m of assets on their annual balance sheet
over 250 employees

There are two main exemptions. The first is that if your company is a subsidiary of a large company or has subsidiaries, you don't have to report their emissions if they fall below the 'large' definition above.

You also don’t need to report if your organisation is deemed a ‘low energy user’ (using under 40 MWh per year) although you still need to do the calculations to check if this is the case.

What does SECR require you to report?

If your company fits the criteria above, you will need to report:

1. Your energy use

This is the total energy use by your company buildings and cars most typically. Collect the total amounts of fuel (petrol, diesel, etc), gas and electricity you have used during your reporting year and convert it into GWh (Gigawatt hours). Repeat for your overseas operations.

The aim here is to use less energy each year or at least be more efficient with it.

2. Your greenhouse gas emissions

Once you have the energy consumption, you need to calculate the associated greenhouse gas emissions using both a market-based approach and location-based approach and present them like this:

Note that you aren’t required to report fuel used by a third party like an airline, taxi company, train company etc. This falls under Scope 3. You only report the fuel and electricity from your company controlled facilities and cars.

Jargon buster

Scope 1 emissions

These are the emissions generated by company owned and controlled resources and may include petrol, diesel, gas and / or oil used in company vehicles, factories, for office heating, etc.

Scope 2 emissions

These are the emissions created by the electricity your company purchases.

Location based emissions

The location-based Scope 2 emissions figure shows what a company is physically putting into the air from the electricity consumed from the grid. To get this result, we use the average emissions intensity factor of the country for that year (the UK in 2023 in this case) which is 207 tCO2e per GWh (0.20707 kgCO2e per kWh). That means, a UK business using 1.4 GWh of energy would produce 290 tCO2e of location based emissions.

Market based emissions

This figure is more specific to your business emissions since you can affect it through your purchasing decisions. For example, your company may have bought electricity from renewable sources which has a much lower carbon footprint. For the same amount of electricity as the example above (1.4 GWh), the market-based Scope 2 emissions would be 0 tCO2e if you were on a fully renewable tariff.

*Note: It is just your electricity emissions that are calculated differently for market-based vs location-based reporting since each country has a different energy mix (of coal, nuclear, renewables etc) to produce electricity. Oil and gas emit the same amount of emissions wherever in the world they are burned.

Will SECR change in the future?

We hope so and expect it to. At the moment it is asking for the very minimum in carbon reporting. To give it context, measuring your SECR emissions can typically be less than a day's work whilst measuring your total carbon footprint can often take a month or so.

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How can ecollective help?

ecollective can help by calculating your organisation’s carbon footprint and identifying strategies for reduction. As part of our calculations, we supply you with the data you need to comply with SECR reporting requirements. We specialise in companies and organisations in the travel and events sectors.

To find out more, book a free, no-obligation call with Charlie, ecollective’s founder.

How to Comply with SECR Rules