Reporting to the correct carbon model is important for accurate reporting and customer/regulatory compliance.
Reporting Models
Streamlined Energy & Carbon Reporting (SECR)
SECR (also known as Streamlined Energy & Carbon Reporting) is compulsory for around 12,000 businesses throughout the UK. These businesses must provide information on their energy and carbon emissions on a yearly basis. Failure to submit an annual SECR report; if the deadline is missed or if the information is incorrect, may result in the business being fined.
Do you need to comply with Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) requirements?
All organisations that meet two or more of the following requirements must comply. SECR Regulations apply to all large businesses (as defined in the Companies Act), Limited Liability Partnerships and quoted companies.
- Turnover £36 million or more
- Balance sheet total £18 million or more
- 250 employees or more
What do you need to report?
The SECR report has to be filed with your company accounts each year and lodged with Companies House. It applies to the first financial year that starts on or after 1st April 2019, and each subsequent year. The reporting period is based on reporting companies’ financial year to align with existing financial and strategic reporting. Company accounts cannot be filed without the SECR report being included. SECR requires that companies include in their annual director’s report the following information:
- Annual UK greenhouse gas emissions (in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e), as a minimum relating to gas, purchased electricity and transport fuel
- Associated energy use (in kWh)
- An emissions intensity ratio (e.g. tCO2e per full time equivalent employee, or other suitable indicator)
- A stated methodology used for calculating the footprint (e.g. SmartCarbon aligns to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol and uses the UK government emissions factors)
- A narrative on energy efficiency measures taken and planned. If no measures have been taken, this should be stated
- In future years, the prior year equivalent figures are also required to be disclosed for comparison, but this is not mandatory in the first year.
How can CarbonInsight help?
CarbonInsight can automatically calculate the annual aggregate figures required for your financial reporting from your raw invoices and fuel data. Simply import or upload the transactions for each month and let CarbonInsight allocate carbon to SECR reporting categories as required.
GHG Protocol | Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard
The Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Protocol is the main global standard for public and private sector entities to measure emissions. Its standards apply to operations, value chains, and climate change mitigation actions. It arose from a collaborative effort by governments, industry associations, NGOs, and corporations, in partnership with the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD).
The most well-known system the Protocol has established for GHG emissions measurement is with its scoped emissions categories. But this only covers one part of its work. In addition to these Scopes, it has standards for a wide variety of situations and use cases. Over time, its standards are periodically updated and the GHG Protocol has
developed tools and training for better carbon emissions calculation.
Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the GHG Protocol has broadened to create standards and tools for governments and cities to track climate action. Recently, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol launched its Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials (PCAF) initiative in 2019. Its aim is to develop a global standard for the financial industry to report GHG emissions from investments.
The Corporate Accounting and Reporting Standard is the defacto gloabl benchmark for corporate carbon reporting, providing a framework that businesses of all scales can use to report their carbon emissions in a comparable way
Do you need to report to the GHG Protocol | Corporate Standard?
No, not to meet any specific legislative requirements.
The corporate standard is a voluntary scheme to report against at this stage. The GHG Protocol is however adopted as the foundation of many other reporting schemes (ISO 14067, ISO 1425, PAS 2080), and is a good choice to report against for external verification. This could be useful for carbon trading and keeping your customer base confident with your EPD/CPD reporting.
What do you need to report?
The GHG Protocol approaches carbon reporting in a series of stages, so as to consistently apportion carbon depending on the corporate and operational boundaries of businesses.
Stage 1. Organisational Scope
In this stage, you establish what proportion of the carbon emissions (calculated later) apply to your businesses, particularly subsidiaries, based on your proportion ownership, control, or operational activities within them. This is done to ensure you don't double-count or undercount carbon alongside over organisations you share ownership or control with. The GHG protocol is not prescriptive over how you set these boundaries, but requires that you are clear about your decision making and consistent in your application of the rules you establish.
Alongside agreeing apportionment rules at a business level, similar decisions need to be made at an asset level. Assets used by your business could be owned, financed, leased, loaned, or hired. You therefore need to agree what emissions you count as belonging to you through your use of the asset, and which belong to the owner (if different) of the equipment.
Stage 2. Apply Scopes to Emissions
The GHG Protocol establised the widely recognised system of emissions scopes.
It is expected that businesses will report their Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions as a minimum, bringing in more elements relating to Scope 3 as their reporting capabilities increase.
The challenge of GHG carbon reporting is to generate one or more scoped carbon records for each business transaction or activity.
How can CarbonInsight help?
CarbonInsight can automatically calculate the annual aggregate figures required for your financial reporting from your raw invoices and fuel data. Simply import or upload the transactions for each month and let CarbonInsight allocate carbon to your GHG Protocol reporting categories as required.
Carbon Insight | Carbon Reporting, Simplified
© Copyright Carbon Insight. All rights reserved.