Guidance

Green Book supplementary guidance: valuation of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions for appraisal

Supplementary guidance to Treasury’s Green Book providing government analysts with rules for valuing energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions.

Documents

Background documentation for guidance on valuation of energy use and greenhouse gas emissions

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Guidance for using the toolkit

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Toolkit spreadsheet for valuing changes in greenhouse gas emissions

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Data tables 1 to 19: supporting the toolkit and the guidance

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Template for reporting emissions savings

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Details

Valuing energy use and greenhouse gases is vital to ensure government takes full account of climate change and energy impacts when appraising and evaluating public policies and projects.

This guidance provides government analysts with a set of rules for valuing energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions, and is drafted in consultation with analysts across government.

It contains practical information about:

  • the implementation of the carbon valuation methodology for UK policy appraisal
  • the reporting requirements for compliance with carbon budgets
  • how to calculate the cost effectiveness of climate change policies (see chapter 5 of ‘Valuation of energy use’ for full details on cost effectiveness)

The guidance supplements the HM Treasury: Green Book, which is general guidance on how to conduct appraisal and evaluation.

Published 15 October 2012
Last updated 30 November 2023 + show all updates
  1. Updated CO2-equivalence (Global Warming Potentials) values of non-CO2 greenhouse gases to align them with IPCC fifth assessment report (AR5). Wording changes re. traded sector applications. Republication of GDP deflator.

  2. Updated Data tables 1-19 to fix formatting errors.

  3. Annual update of guidance and other documentation. We have reinstated the toolkit and its guidance.

  4. We have updated the Supplementary Guidance to include the new carbon values.

  5. Annual update of all guidance and other documentation.

  6. 2 errors in the spreadsheet toolkit have been fixed: cell R4 on the sheet 'discount_factors' has changed from 1 to -2, and cells AG5 to CX5 now align with the carbon values series.

  7. Annual update of all guidance and other documentation.

  8. Updated main doc, toolkit and data tables published.

  9. Latest documentation published

  10. Updated Green Book guidance.

  11. 2014 energy and green house gas appraisal guidance

  12. Additonal documents added.

  13. Documents updated.

  14. First published.