PPN 006 Carbon Reduction Plans
A Carbon Reduction Plan that passes, whatever your data lives in
Above £5m per annum in central government, a compliant published plan is pass or fail: without one your submission is not evaluated at all. We write the plan from whatever you already have, whether that is a carbon accounting platform, a spreadsheet, or a folder of fuel invoices and mileage claims.
It is PPN 006 now, not PPN 06/21
PPN 06/21 was reissued and renumbered PPN 006 in February 2025, to sit under the Procurement Act 2023. It applies to procurements commenced on or after 24 February 2025; anything started before that still runs under the old note. The £5m threshold and the emissions requirements are identical, so your plan's content does not change. What changes is that a submission citing the old number in 2026 tells an evaluator the plan has not been looked at in a while, which is exactly the impression a Carbon Reduction Plan is meant to avoid.
What a compliant plan actually looks like
A worked example, so you can see the shape of the thing rather than read a description of it. Every figure below is illustrative and invented for demonstration. Yours will be your own numbers, and the structure is what carries across.
Emissions against the pathway to Net Zero
Illustrative. Total gross emissions, tCO2e, baseline year 2019.
Where the 274 tCO2e comes from
Illustrative. Scope 1, Scope 2 and the five Scope 3 categories PPN 006 requires.
View as table
| Scope | Category | tCO2e |
|---|---|---|
| Scope 3 | Employee commuting | 96 |
| Scope 3 | Business travel | 71 |
| Scope 2 | Purchased electricity | 43 |
| Scope 3 | Upstream transport and distribution | 28 |
| Scope 1 | Company vehicles and gas | 19 |
| Scope 3 | Waste generated in operations | 11 |
| Scope 3 | Downstream transport and distribution | 6 |
| Total | 274 | |
The seven sections a plan must carry
Miss one and the plan is non-compliant, however good the emissions work behind it.
- 01
Supplier name and publication date
Sounds trivial, fails plans. The CRP has to be published on your own website at a stable URL you can give a buyer, and the date has to show it is current.
- 02
Commitment to Net Zero by 2050
An explicit statement that the organisation is committed to achieving Net Zero emissions by 2050, naming the target year for your own operations if it is earlier.
- 03
Baseline emissions footprint
A stated baseline year and its emissions, against which all future reduction is measured. Choose it deliberately: an unrepresentative baseline distorts every figure you publish afterwards.
- 04
Current emissions reporting
Scope 1, Scope 2, and the five required Scope 3 categories, for the current reporting year, quantified in tCO2e using the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
- 05
Emissions reduction targets
Quantified targets with dates, not aspirations. This is the section evaluators read hardest, because it is where a plan either commits to something measurable or does not.
- 06
Carbon reduction projects
Completed measures and their achieved carbon reduction, plus planned measures. Achieved reductions are what make targets credible rather than decorative.
- 07
Declaration and director sign-off
Board approval and signature by a director or equivalent senior leader. Unsigned plans get rejected, and so do plans signed by someone without the standing to sign them.
Whatever your data lives in, we will work from it
A Carbon Reduction Plan is a document with a defined structure. It is not the output of a platform, and no procurement policy requires you to own carbon accounting software to produce one. That misconception costs organisations a purchase they did not need and, worse, months of delay while they procure and implement it before bidding.
If you already run a carbon accounting platform, we will work from what it produces and you will not be asked to re-key anything. If your data is a spreadsheet, we will work from the spreadsheet. If it is fuel cards, utility bills, mileage claims and a waste contract, we will work from those, and for most organisations under a few hundred people that is genuinely all it takes for the seven categories PPN 006 asks about.
Software earns its place when your footprint is complex or your annual update is a serious exercise across many sites. It is a good decision on its own merits. It is just not a compliance requirement, and it should not sit between you and a bid.
Why plans get rejected, and none of the reasons are environmental
A Carbon Reduction Plan is assessed as a selection criterion, which means pass or fail rather than scored. The failures we see are administrative, which is the frustrating part, because the organisation usually had the substance and lost the bid on the paperwork.
Not published, or not reachable
The plan has to sit at a URL on your own website that a buyer can open. A PDF attached to the bid, or a link behind a login, does not satisfy it.
A missing Scope 3 category
Five are required, and employee commuting is the one most often left out because it is the hardest to estimate. Omitting it makes the plan non-compliant regardless of the rest.
Aspirations instead of targets
"We are committed to reducing our impact" is not a target. A target has a number and a date, and evaluators read this section hardest precisely because it is where plans go vague.
Unsigned, or signed too far down
Board approval and director-level signature. A plan signed by a facilities manager, however competent, does not carry the standing the note requires.
Carbon Reduction Plans: common questions
What is PPN 006 and did it replace PPN 06/21?
PPN 006 is the current Procurement Policy Note requiring a Carbon Reduction Plan from suppliers bidding major central government contracts. It reissued and renumbered PPN 06/21 in February 2025 to sit under the Procurement Act 2023, and applies to procurements commenced on or after 24 February 2025. Procurements started before that date still run under PPN 06/21. The threshold and the emissions requirements are the same in both, so in practice the content of your plan is unchanged, but quoting the old number in a 2026 submission signals that the plan has not been reviewed recently.
Which contracts require a Carbon Reduction Plan?
The requirement applies to central government contracts above £5 million per annum. It is applied as a selection criterion, which means it is pass or fail: a bidder without a compliant, published plan is not evaluated on the merits of anything else in the submission. Many buyers below the threshold now ask for one anyway, and a plan you already hold costs nothing to supply.
Which emissions do we have to report?
Scope 1 direct emissions, Scope 2 emissions from purchased energy, and five specific Scope 3 categories from the Greenhouse Gas Protocol: business travel, employee commuting, upstream transportation and distribution, waste generated in operations, and downstream transportation and distribution. You are not required to report your full Scope 3 footprint, which is the misunderstanding that makes organisations think this is a bigger exercise than it is.
Do we need carbon accounting software to produce a compliant plan?
No. A Carbon Reduction Plan is a document with a defined structure, not the output of a platform. If you already use carbon accounting software we will work from what it produces. If your data lives in spreadsheets, fuel invoices, mileage claims and utility bills, we will work from those. Software makes annual updating easier at scale and is worth having if your footprint is complex, but it is not a compliance requirement and buying it is not a prerequisite for bidding.
How often does the plan need updating?
At least annually, and the practical convention is within six months of your financial year end. Each update carries the most recent emissions data across Scope 1, Scope 2 and the five required Scope 3 categories, and gets re-signed by a director. A plan that has not been updated in two years is worse than useless in a bid, because it evidences that the commitment is not being managed.
What makes an evaluator reject a Carbon Reduction Plan?
In our experience, four things. It is not published at a URL the buyer can reach. It omits one of the five required Scope 3 categories, usually employee commuting. It states aspirations rather than quantified targets with dates. Or it is unsigned, or signed by someone without director-level standing. All four are avoidable, and all four are administrative rather than environmental failures.
Related: PPN 026 and social value from January 2027, ISO and Cyber Essentials compliance and the RM6390 energy and decarbonisation framework.
Reviewed 22 August 2026 against the PPN 006 technical standard. All figures in the worked example are illustrative. Policy changes, so confirm the current published note before planning around it, and nothing here is legal advice.
Bidding above £5m without a plan?
Tell us what data you hold and what you are bidding. If you already have a plan we will tell you honestly whether it would pass, which is usually a five-minute answer.
Carbon Reduction Plan
What are you bidding, and what emissions data do you currently hold?