Ensure your energy efficiency measures and energy and carbon emissions are reportable to the UK Government. Achieve SECR compliance as Professional Energy Services (PES) handles all your energy and carbon reporting needs.
SECR reporting can be time consuming and complex for any business owner. By outsourcing your commitment to report on your energy consumption you can avoid the risk of an unsuccessful application and save time to focus on other priorities.
When outsourcing your SECR reporting to PES you will receive:
By completing your SECR reporting you will also:
PES has helped hundreds of businesses across the UK with their carbon reporting and improved the transparency of their energy efficiency actions. Get in touch today to learn more about how our team can support your energy and carbon reporting requirements.
SECR stands for Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting. It is a carbon reporting scheme put out by Ofgem to ensure that businesses of a certain size are reporting their energy consumption and associated greenhouse gas emissions in their financial accounts. The SECR reporting legislation has been introduced to make carbon reporting more transparent as businesses work towards the government goals of net-zero carbon emissions. Organisations need to demonstrate their energy efficiency actions and display their emissions against an intensity metric.
SECR replaced the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) Energy Efficiency Scheme that was for a small percentage of large energy users and ended on 31 March 2019. The CRC scheme required all qualifying organisations to report energy and carbon emissions in their annual reports.
SECR extends the requirements of existing carbon legislation such as Mandatory Carbon Reporting (MCR) regulations and is mandatory for all eligible organisations.
Private sector organisations must meet the SECR legalisation if they meet the following criteria:
Large non-quoted UK Company and large Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) you must report SECR if they met the following:
To qualify you must hit at least 2 of those thresholds. If you hit just one, then you’re exempt from reporting.
Additionally, public sector organisations and low energy user private companies that can evidence they use less than 40 mWh in a year are exempt.
SECR requires all businesses to include the following information in their annual Director’s report for financial years beginning on or after 1 April 2019.
The above SECR reporting requirements differ for quoted companies and unquoted companies/LLPs:
As quoted companies are already reporting on scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under the mandatory GHG scheme, they need to also report on the underlying global energy use for the current period and demonstrate the difference between UK and offshore energy and carbon emissions.
Unquoted companies and LLPs have the minimum reporting requirements of just UK energy and Associated GHG emissions, (The measurements of GHG emissions should be in tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent)
Reporting of scope 3 emissions (all indirect emissions not included in scope 2) will remain voluntary for both quoted and unquoted companies.
SECR also requires organisations to purchase carbon allowances to subsididse their carbon emissions. As a result, CRC charges were added to the Climate Change Levy (CCL) increasing the CCL on electricity to 0.847p/kWh, and the CCL on natural gas to 0.339p/kWh in 2019/20. Increases of 45% and 67% respectively.
Therefore, Climate Change Agreements (CCAs) have become a lot more important to businesses as they aim to ease the impact of CCL costs on manufacturing and industry, giving CCL relief in exchange for a commitment to improve energy efficiency.
SECR was created to make energy and carbon reporting simpler, by aligning with existing reporting requirements, the burden of energy reporting and energy compliance requirements on organisations is reduced. It will also contribute to the government’s Clean Growth Strategy ambition of enabling businesses and industries to improve their energy productivity by at least 20% by 2030.
The goal of SECR is to accurately carbon footprint the business that covers all the scope of emissions that are in the SECR legislation, and to provide a measurement index and commentary about how to reduce the carbon footprint of that business moving forward. It is another piece of energy legalisation with the aim of supporting the UK Government’s Net Zero promise and reducing global emissions.
Typically, senior managers in finance or general managers are responsible for filing annual reports where SECR is included. Reporting can be performed in-house or by outsourcing to an energy consultant which brings the following advantages:
A business should be fully aware of it’s legal obligations to perform SECR. The environmental agency does send out notice letters to companies that qualify. Companies should not rely on this notification as they may have multiple offices and the registered office may not have any employees who are solely responsible for carbon compliance legalisation.
If you conduct your SECR reporting earlier in the year, and not at the same time as your annual accounts, you are prepared to present this carbon report with the rest of the financial audit so it does not become too overwhelming conducting both at the same time.
The most time-consuming element of SECR reporting is gathering all the information and data required to accurately footprint the business. With gas and electricity for buildings, if you’re using an energy consultant, it is likely that all your energy consumption data is already captured and stored in a central online repository, saving huge amounts of time.
Travel is a key factor that needs to be calculated and it presents its own challenges. For example, its common to consider the following:
All of these factors must be collected and with the appropriate conversion factors applied to it to be able to produce an accurate carbon footprint.
Transport energy in the reporting framework should only include transport fuel that the organisation has purchased itself such as the use of company cars, fleets and private/hire cars, and employees reimbursing their own milage on behalf of the organisation. However, journeys where the fuel is paid indirectly such as air, rail, bus, or taxi journeys (that the business doesn’t own), or fuel for the transportation of goods or equipment by third parties, wouldn’t be included.
The deadline for SECR will be the same as when your financial accounts are due.
SECR legislation has not clearly defined that there would be a financial penalty. However, it is heavily intimated that there would be consequences of financial nature. So far there is very little evidence in the public domain of examples of official fines being imposed for a lack of SECR reports.
The biggest penalty you should consider (in addition to missing out on the economic and environmental benefits), is that you would have a public record that your business is not complying with carbon legislation. That can cause damage to your brand, corporate social responsibility, green credentials, and potentially hinder you when competitively bidding for business.
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