Energy Academy
Level 1/UK Energy Regulation & Context
Energy Legislation & Compliance2 / 11

SECR: Streamlined Energy & Carbon Reporting

Who reports, what to report, and how to structure the disclosure.

9 min read · Last reviewed July 2026

Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) is the regime that puts energy and carbon into the annual report. Where ESOS makes large organisations audit their energy every four years in private, SECR makes them publish their consumption, emissions and efficiency actions every year, in a document investors, customers and journalists actually read. For an energy manager, that visibility is leverage: numbers that appear in the annual report get board attention in a way an internal energy review never will.

Facts in this lesson were checked in July 2026. Confirm details against the official environmental reporting guidelines on GOV.UK.

Who reports

Three groups are in scope, reporting through their annual directors' (or equivalent) report:

  • Quoted companies, which have reported greenhouse gas emissions since 2013 and under SECR must also report global energy use.
  • Large unquoted companies, meaning those meeting at least two of: turnover above £36 million, balance sheet above £18 million, 250 or more employees.
  • Large LLPs, on the same size tests, via an equivalent energy and carbon report.

A detail worth knowing after the Companies Act size thresholds rose in April 2025: SECR's scope was deliberately left anchored to the older figures above. A company that moved down a size category for accounts purposes can therefore still be required to make SECR disclosures. There is also a de minimis let-out: organisations using 40 MWh or less in the reporting year can state that instead of reporting in full.

What gets reported

For a large unquoted company, the minimum content each year is:

  • UK energy use (as a minimum: electricity, gas and transport fuel), in kWh;
  • the associated scope 1 and scope 2 greenhouse gas emissions, in tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, calculated with the government's published conversion factors;
  • at least one intensity ratio, such as tonnes of CO₂e per £ million of turnover or per unit of production, so readers can compare years and companies of different sizes;
  • a narrative description of the energy efficiency actions taken during the year;
  • the methodology used, with prior-year comparatives once the first year is done.

Quoted companies report global figures and include scope 3 where material. Many organisations go further voluntarily, but this is the floor the law sets.

The intensity ratio is where M&T earns its public moment

Raw consumption rises and falls with business activity, which is exactly the problem the monitoring and targeting course solves internally with normalisation. SECR's intensity ratio is the same idea made public. An energy manager who already runs a normalised baseline can populate SECR credibly in hours, and, more importantly, can make sure the published narrative claims savings the data actually supports.

The practical reporting cycle

SECR reporting follows the financial year and sits inside the statutory accounts process, which means the deadlines belong to finance, not to the energy team. The workable pattern is to agree the boundary and methodology once (which meters, which conversion factor set, how transport fuel is captured), automate the data collection through the same channels the M&T programme already uses, and hand finance a finished, evidenced section well before the accounts close. The government conversion factors are updated each year, so the calculation must use the set matching the reporting year.

The efficiency-actions narrative deserves more care than it usually gets. It is the one paragraph where the energy programme speaks directly to shareholders. "We continued to monitor consumption" is a wasted opportunity; "we completed the LED retrofit forecast to save 180 MWh a year and commissioned heat recovery on the main compressor" is a record of competence.

The next lesson turns from reporting to taxation: the Climate Change Levy, the line on every business energy bill that efficiency shrinks directly.

Sources and further reading