Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting for academy trusts: a quick guide

This article was reviewed and updated in October 2025.

Multi-academy trusts over a certain size are required by law to disclose information about their energy use and carbon emissions. We’ve put together this quick guide for academy trustees and chief financial officers, to help you get up to speed.

Why do academies have to report on energy and carbon?

Large organisations are responsible for a significant portion of the UK’s carbon footprint, so the UK government needs information on exactly what emissions they are producing. This helps it to develop policy towards meeting its climate targets.

The Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) scheme requires energy and carbon reporting from businesses either quoted on a stock exchange or over a certain size (or both).

The Education and Skills Funding Agency has confirmed that academies are within the scope of the legislation, so if a multi-academy trust (MAT) is big enough to meet the criteria, it is obliged to report under SECR. (The same thing goes for SECR and charities.)

There is government guidance to help academies report under SECR, most recently updated in September 2025. It isn’t very different from the guidance aimed at other businesses.

How do we know if our MAT has to report under SECR?

The definition of “large company” used by the SECR rules comes from the Companies Act 2006. It means a company that meets two or more of the following criteria:

• turnover (or gross income) of £36 million or more;
• balance sheet assets of £18 million or more;
• 250 employees or more.

If your annual financial reporting is for the MAT as a whole, you should consider the MAT as a whole (not individual academy schools within the trust) when deciding if it is large enough to come within the scope of SECR. If so, it is a large company for SECR purposes and is legally obliged to report on its energy use and carbon emissions.

What about single-academy trusts?

The vast majority of academy schools are now part of MATs. The number of single-academy trusts in England is getting smaller every year.

SECR eligibility for single-academy trusts is the same as for MATs: it depends on the size.  You need to look at the total turnover, assets and number of employees.

What’s the deadline for SECR reports?

Organisations are expected to file their SECR report along with their normal annual report. Obviously the exact deadline depends on the dates of your financial year. The Education and Skills Funding Agency recommends that you also publish your energy and carbon information on your website, but this is not compulsory.

How should multi-academy trusts approach SECR reporting?

The first step is to gather the data on the MAT’s UK energy use. This means the energy you’re actually using and paying for. So the heating and lighting of school buildings would count, and so would any petrol used by school-operated transport. But it wouldn’t include the petrol used by parents driving their children to school or teachers commuting to the school as their workplace.

“You can easily see how a school minibus would come under SECR, but a coach hired for a day trip would not.”

An easy rule of thumb is to ask whether the academy is purchasing the fuel itself; using this rule, you can easily see how a school minibus would come under SECR, but a coach hired for a day trip would not.

The next step is to calculate the actual greenhouse gas emissions associated with this energy use. The government publishes a list of “conversion factors” to help you calculate this. For example, a litre of petrol is equivalent to about 2.3kg of carbon dioxide.

You then need to come up with what the guidance calls an “intensity ratio”. This is a way of comparing your emissions data with a metric that is meaningful to your organisation. For example, a lawnmower manufacturer might come up with an intensity ratio of carbon emitted per lawnmower created. It might seem more difficult to do this for an organisation in the education sector, but you might choose, for example, tonnes of carbon per pupil.

What must be included in our SECR report?

The legal minimum to include is:

• Your annual UK energy use and associated greenhouse gas emissions;
• Your chosen intensity ratio;
• Your methodologies (how you gathered the data and calculated it);
• What the academy trust is doing to improve energy efficiency. (There are no penalties for doing nothing – you just have to say so);
• The previous year’s figures for comparison purposes.

Are there any exceptions to academy trusts’ SECR obligations?

Assuming the MAT is large enough to count as a large company under the Companies Act 2006, it probably isn’t an exception. However, if your trust consumes fewer than 40,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy in the reporting period, you qualify as a “low energy user” and become exempt.

In order to know whether or not your trust qualifies for an exemption, you have to get a clear idea of your annual energy use. This means doing the work of calculating your UK energy use, so you can’t escape at least the first step.

We would stress that wondering about loopholes and exceptions is the wrong way to approach SECR. Many large organisations have found that the information they gather as part of their SECR obligations proves to be invaluable in helping them identify ways to become more energy-efficient, reduce their carbon footprint and cut running costs for the trust.

In the education sector, many organisations have strong values around transparency and doing their bit for the environment. If your multi-academy trust has an ethos like this, your SECR reporting can actively support it.

How do we ensure we get our SECR reporting right?

Big corporations usually have someone responsible for matters relating to energy use and carbon, but this may not be the case for academy trusts. The person allocated the task may have no previous experience or knowledge of doing what is required.

The government guidance gives some worked examples to help you with the kind of calculations involved, but you may prefer to engage expert help to ensure compliance and improve the reporting process moving forward.

For more information on SECR, read our SECR FAQs or get in touch for advice and support via the contact form below.