Carbon Reduction Plan example: a complete worked plan for a small UK business

The official GOV.UK Carbon Reduction Plan template

The Cabinet Office publishes a free Carbon Reduction Plan template with PPN 006. You can download the editable template as an OpenDocument text file (.odt), and the same template is printed in section 7 of the PPN 006 note on GOV.UK.

It is short. The headings, in order, are:

1. Supplier name and publication date
2. Commitment to achieving net zero
3. Baseline emissions footprint: the baseline year, notes on the calculation and a table of Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions
4. Current emissions reporting: the same table for your reporting year
5. Emissions reduction targets
6. Carbon reduction projects: completed initiatives and future initiatives
7. Declaration and sign off

An annex of guidance notes explains how to fill in the baseline, targets and projects, and suggests a graph showing progress against your targets. It describes the project details as "for information only". Do not read that as optional: the buyer guidance fails a plan that does not set out the environmental management measures you will apply on the contract.

The template does no maths. You work out the emissions yourself with the UK Government conversion factors and type in the totals. The 2021 PPN 06/21 template has the same structure; the main differences are in the declaration, covered in our PPN 006 guide.

The template wording is Crown copyright, published under the Open Government Licence v3.0, so you can reuse it.

The example company and its 2025 data

Illustrative Facilities Ltd provides building maintenance services. It has 45 staff, an office with a small depot, and eight diesel vans for its engineers. It has never measured its emissions before, so its first reporting year, calendar 2025, is also its baseline year.

Freight is measured in tonne.km: the tonnes carried multiplied by the kilometres travelled. Category 4 covers the transport of goods the company buys, between its direct (tier 1) suppliers and its own sites, plus any transport and delivery services it pays for, in vehicles it does not own or control.

Commuting is estimated from staff numbers: 45 staff x 4 days a week on site x 46 working weeks x 2 journeys x 14 km each way = 231,840 km a year. Of that, 75% is by car (173,880 km), 5% by train (11,592 passenger km) and 10% by bus (23,184 passenger km). The other 10% walk or cycle, which adds nothing. Staff also work from home for an average of 6 hours a week: 45 x 6 x 46 = 12,420 hours.

The average car factor is per vehicle km, so the car figure treats each commuter as driving their own car. If staff share lifts, count each shared car journey once.

Category 9, downstream transportation and distribution, is zero: the company sells services, not goods that are delivered to its customers.

How the emissions were calculated

Each line is the activity multiplied by the 2025 UK Government conversion factor, divided by 1,000 to turn kilograms into tonnes. For diesel: 14,500 litres x 2.57082 kg CO2e per litre = 37,277 kg, or 37.3 tCO2e.

Figures are rounded to one decimal place. They are the results our Carbon Reduction Plan builder gives for these inputs. Scope 1 is 44% of the total, Scope 2 13% and Scope 3 43%.

• Scope 2 uses the location-based UK grid factor, which the government's reporting guidelines require for electricity.
• Flights use the factor with radiative forcing. DESNZ notes that aviation is the only form of transport where radiative forcing is considered significant.
• Refrigerant is counted from the amount topped up during the year, the method DESNZ uses in its own worked example. Just 1.5 kg of R410A adds 2.9 tCO2e, more than all the company's train and air travel for work combined.
• Recycling adds only 28 kg for 6 tonnes, against 4.7 tCO2e for 9 tonnes sent to landfill. DESNZ attributes the emissions from recycling to the user of the recycled material, not the producer of the waste.

The completed example plan

This is the plan as Illustrative Facilities Ltd would publish it, using the template wording. The template's sentence on the reduction already achieved against the baseline is left out, because the baseline year and the reporting year are the same, so there is no reduction to report yet.

Supplier name: Illustrative Facilities Ltd

Publication date: 24 March 2026

Commitment to achieving net zero. Illustrative Facilities Ltd is committed to achieving net zero emissions by 2050.

Baseline emissions footprint. Baseline emissions are a record of the greenhouse gases that have been produced in the past and were produced prior to the introduction of any strategies to reduce emissions. Baseline emissions are the reference point against which emissions reduction can be measured.

Baseline year: 2025

Additional details relating to the baseline emissions calculations: Illustrative Facilities Ltd has not previously assessed or reported its emissions, so our first reporting period (2025) is used as the baseline.

Current emissions reporting. Reporting year: 2025

Emissions reduction targets. In order to continue our progress to achieving net zero, we have adopted the following carbon reduction targets. We project that carbon emissions will decrease over the next five years to 87.5 tCO2e by 2030. This is a reduction of 25%.

Completed carbon reduction initiatives. The following environmental management measures and projects have been completed or implemented since the 2025 baseline. The measures will be in effect when performing the contract.

• Replaced lighting with LEDs and fitted motion sensors
• Installed smart meters and set energy reduction targets
• Set up recycling and reduced waste sent to landfill
• Use video calls in place of some business travel
• Plan engineers' van routes to cut mileage

Future carbon reduction initiatives. In the future we hope to implement further measures such as:

• Replace diesel vans with electric vans as leases end
• Replace the office gas boiler with a heat pump
• Introduce a cycle to work scheme

Declaration and sign off. This Carbon Reduction Plan has been completed in accordance with PPN 006 and associated guidance and reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans.

Emissions have been reported and recorded in accordance with the published reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans and the GHG Reporting Protocol corporate standard and uses the appropriate government emission conversion factors for greenhouse gas company reporting.

Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions have been reported in accordance with SECR requirements (where required), and the required subset of Scope 3 emissions have been reported in accordance with the published reporting standard for Carbon Reduction Plans and the Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) Standard.

This Carbon Reduction Plan has been reviewed and signed off by the board of directors (or equivalent management body).

Signed on behalf of the supplier: A N Other, Managing Director. Date: 24 March 2026. Board approval given on 24 March 2026.

Annex: method. Emissions were calculated using the UK Government GHG Conversion Factors for Company Reporting 2025 (version 1), published by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero. Scope 2 is reported on a location basis. Flight emissions include the radiative forcing uplift. Refrigerant emissions use the kilograms of gas topped up during the year as the measure of leakage, with the factors for Kyoto Protocol gases.

The sign-off line names the director, job title and date and states the board approval date, as paragraphs 24 and 25 of the technical standard ask. The plan would then go on the company's own website, linked from the homepage.

Carbon Reduction Plan requirements: how the template maps to PPN 006

Typical mistakes

• No measures listed. A plan that does not indicate the environmental management measures you will apply on the contract fails the buyer's check.
• No dates. The technical standard asks for the date of board approval as well as the director's name, job title and sign-off date. The template's dotted date line is easy to leave blank.
• Missing refrigerant. All Scope 1 emissions count, including refrigerant gas lost from air conditioning. In the example, 1.5 kg of R410A adds 2.9 tCO2e.
• The wrong year's factors. DESNZ says to use the factors that match the period your data covers. The UK electricity factor is 0.177 kg CO2e per kWh in the 2025 set and 0.13096 in the 2026 set, so using 2026 factors on 2025 data would cut this example's Scope 2 from 15.6 to 11.5 tCO2e.
• Zero Scope 2 for a green tariff. The government's reporting guidelines require Scope 2 electricity to be reported with location-based grid average factors. A market-based figure, which can reflect a renewable tariff, may be shown only in addition.
• Vehicles in the wrong scope. Fuel for vans and cars the company owns or controls is Scope 1. Staff driving their own or hire cars for work is Scope 3 business travel. Count each vehicle once, by fuel or by distance, not both.
• A category left out. The technical standard requires emissions for all five Scope 3 categories, so list each one, even at zero, and explain any you cannot measure. The buyer guidance fails a plan that does not declare its emissions in line with the reporting standard, or that reports only some scopes without an explanation.
• Old data. A reporting period more than 18 months before the tender notice fails unless you explain why. Update the plan within 6 months of your financial year end.
• Published in the wrong place. The plan belongs on your own UK website, linked from a prominent place on your homepage.
• A policy instead of a plan. A corporate social responsibility statement, policy or case study cannot be accepted in place of a plan, and neither can a Science Based Targets initiative or Race to Zero commitment on its own.
• A net zero year after 2050. The commitment must be 2050 at the latest.

What small businesses need

Whether you need a plan depends on the contract, not the size of your business:

• Central government: PPN 006 applies to contracts above £5 million a year, including VAT. A business trading for less than 12 months can instead confirm its commitment to net zero by 2050 and publish a full plan as soon as possible. See our PPN 006 guide.
• NHS: for NHS procurements starting on or after 1 April 2027, contracts below £5 million a year (and above the procurement thresholds) need a Carbon Reduction Plan in the PPN 006 format, replacing the shorter Net Zero Commitment. NHS England accepts approval by a company director where there is no board.
• Main contractors: if a larger customer asks you for a plan or emissions data, that comes from its own policy. PPN 006 does not require plans from subcontractors.

The content is the same for every supplier, and most of the data comes from records you already keep: energy bills, fuel card statements, waste invoices, mileage claims and travel bookings. Your air conditioning engineer can tell you how much refrigerant was topped up.

Some rules are lighter than they sound. Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) applies to quoted companies, large unquoted companies and large LLPs, and the declaration only refers to SECR "(where required)". There is no audit requirement. If you have no website, you must give a written copy to anyone who asks within 30 days. The technical standard also notes that many tools and resources are free for SME and VCSE suppliers.

Sources

1. Cabinet Office: PPN 006, Taking account of Carbon Reduction Plans in the procurement of major government contracts (checked 10 October 2026)
2. Cabinet Office: PPN 006 Carbon Reduction Plan template (ODT, added 17 April 2025) (checked 10 October 2026)
3. Cabinet Office: PPN 006, Taking account of Carbon Reduction Plans (HTML, template in section 7) (checked 10 October 2026)
4. Cabinet Office: PPN 006 technical standard for completion of Carbon Reduction Plans (checked 10 October 2026)
5. Cabinet Office: PPN 006 guidance on adopting and applying conditions of participation (checked 10 October 2026)
6. Cabinet Office: PPN 006 frequently asked questions (checked 10 October 2026)
7. DESNZ: Greenhouse gas reporting conversion factors 2025 (published 10 June 2025) (checked 10 October 2026)
8. DESNZ: Conversion factors 2025, full set (introduction, UK electricity, refrigerant, business travel and waste guidance) (checked 10 October 2026)
9. DESNZ: Conversion factors 2025, flat file (factor values used in the example) (checked 10 October 2026)
10. DESNZ: Conversion factors 2026, flat file (revised), for the 2026 UK electricity factor (checked 10 October 2026)
11. Government Commercial Function: PPN 06/21, Taking account of Carbon Reduction Plans, including the 2021 template (PDF) (checked 10 October 2026)
12. NHS England: 2027 NHS carbon reduction plan requirements (updated 21 July 2026) (checked 10 October 2026)