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UK government conversion factors for company reporting of greenhouse gas emissions

The UK government conversion factors enable users to calculate and report greenhouse gas emissions from UK operations based on activity data.

The UK government conversion factors for company reporting of greenhouse gas emissions enable users to calculate and report their emissions based on their activity data, such as volume of fuel used, kWh of electricity purchased, or distance travelled, for their Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions separately.

They are suitable for use by:

  • UK-based organisations of all sizes
  • International organisations reporting on their UK operations

They are relevant to Environmental Reporting Guidelines, including Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) regulations. The factors may also be used for other purposes, but users do so at their own risk.

An update is published each year, together with a methodology report explaining how they are derived and a major changes report explaining any major changes since the previous publication.

These conversion factors differ from the spend-based emissions multipliers currently published by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (Defra) alongside the annual UK and England carbon footprint publication. Defra’s spend-based multipliers are primarily intended to allow users to compare the carbon intensities of different categories of final UK demand, however, they can be used to provide an initial assessment of a user’s full supply-chain emissions based on spending across different goods and services.

Users may wish to use spend-based methods where they do not have sufficient data to use activity-based methods. Users should ensure they report the methods used for their emissions accounting.

Annual conversion factor publications

Updates to this page

Published 1 May 2013
Last updated 11 June 2026 Show all updates
  1. Published Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2026.

  2. Added the 2025 conversion factors.

  3. Added Greenhouse gas reporting conversion factors 2024

  4. Complete our user survey about your requirements for the conversion factors.

  5. Added Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2023.

  6. Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2022 added.

  7. Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2021 added.

  8. Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2020 added.

  9. Conversion factors 2019 added.

  10. Greenhouse gas reporting: conversion factors 2018 published.

  11. 2017 conversion factors published.

  12. Latest conversion factors for 2016 published

  13. updated with rest of content from earlier non gov.uk site

  14. First published.