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Carbon Reduction Plan for PPN 006

A Carbon Reduction Plan is a published statement of your organisation's greenhouse gas emissions and of how you will reduce them. UK central government asks suppliers bidding for major contracts to publish one, under the Procurement Policy Note usually referred to as PPN 006, which replaced the earlier PPN 06/21 terminology. NCZ measures the emissions the plan is built on and verifies the result independently, so what you publish is a measured position rather than a template filled in.

Who it applies to

The requirement sits with suppliers bidding for major UK central government contracts. As a rule of thumb, a compliant Carbon Reduction Plan is a prerequisite for bidding on government contracts over £5 million.

Treat that as the shape of the requirement rather than as the requirement itself. The threshold that applies to you, and the version of the policy note in force, are set by the buyer and stated in the contract notice. Departments, arm's-length bodies and the wider public sector apply it differently, and a growing number of private buyers now ask for the same document with no policy note behind it at all. Read the notice.

What has changed is the bar. Having a plan is now the baseline expectation; organisations are increasingly evaluated on the quality, transparency and credibility of the plan rather than on its existence. A plan that passes a compliance check and says nothing specific about your business is a plan that scores badly.

What a compliant plan must contain

A high-quality Carbon Reduction Plan is concise, transparent and auditable. Eight components are what a public-sector evaluator expects to find.

  1. Organisational profile and declaration. Legal name, trading names, a named contact for the plan, a declaration of alignment with the procurement requirement where it applies, and board-level sign-off.
  2. Baseline emissions and methodology. A stated reporting period and baseline year, reported scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, and the scope 3 categories relevant to you, using GHG Protocol categories.
  3. Targets and timelines. Short-term reduction targets over five to ten years and a long-term net zero ambition, with a clear statement of whether targets are science-based and whether they are validated or still in development.
  4. Reduction measures and an action plan. Specific interventions with named owners, timelines and an estimated emissions impact, prioritising the scope 3 categories that actually drive your footprint.
  5. Data quality, verification and tools. Data sources, assumptions, the emissions factors used, the accounting standard applied, any third-party verification, and how data quality will improve over time.
  6. Governance, resources and supplier engagement. Board oversight, a sustainability sponsor, the internal resource behind the plan, and how suppliers will be supported to report - phased reporting, templates, training.
  7. Residual emissions and removals. Your position on offsets and removals, showing reduction first and removals only for genuinely unavoidable residual emissions.
  8. Monitoring and continuous improvement. At least an annual review cycle, clear KPIs, defined reporting, and the plan kept publicly accessible and updated.

The fifth of those is where most plans are weakest and where NCZ's work sits. A target is a sentence; a baseline is a measurement.

The measurement underneath it

A Carbon Reduction Plan is only as good as the emissions figure it starts from, and an evaluator who reads a lot of them can tell the difference between a measured footprint and an estimate dressed as one.

NCZ measures that footprint through its own carbon management platform, in four levels. The Blue Award is free and models your emissions from a company questionnaire using the NCZ benchmark framework. The Silver Award, £1,500 a year, produces a questionnaire-based scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon footprint report. Gold Certification, £4,500 a year, measures all company emissions through the NCZ data collection portal with weekly support from the customer success team, and produces an ISO 14064 compliant carbon footprint report with a full emissions breakdown. Platinum Certification, £7,500 a year, extends the same work into the supply chain, with a supplier emissions breakdown report and at least 10% of supplier emissions measured, increasing year on year against intensity metrics.

Every level above Blue includes independent verification that internationally recognised calculation and reporting standards have been met. That is the difference between a plan that states a number and a plan whose number somebody else has checked.

How the work runs

Four stages, the same ones the certification programme follows. Scope: the NCZ customer success team works with you to establish which scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions are in scope for your organisation. Capture: the platform records your data and calculates a baseline footprint at organisational, operational and supply-chain level. Report: you receive a report setting out those emissions together with targeted reduction measures you can implement and assess year on year - which is the raw material of the plan's action plan section. Certification: independent verification, and certificates and media packs you can use in a bid.

The reason to do it in that order is that the plan then writes itself from evidence. The action plan names interventions because the measurement showed where the emissions are, and the targets are defensible because there is a baseline behind them.

Where to read more

The full guide is published as a white paper: Carbon Reduction Plan (CRP): A Practical Guide for Organisations. It goes further than this page on methodology, on the standards involved and on the accelerated checklist for preparing one. Part 5 of the carbon reduction series covers building one that works in practice.

If a tender is the reason you are reading this, carbon credentials for tenders sets out the rest of what buyers ask for. For the measurement itself, see the award and certification programme.

Last reviewed: September 2026

Your questions, answered

Who does PPN 006 apply to?

The Procurement Policy Note usually referred to as PPN 006 applies to suppliers bidding for major UK central government contracts. It replaced the earlier PPN 06/21 terminology. As a rule of thumb, a compliant Carbon Reduction Plan is a prerequisite for bidding on government contracts over £5 million.

Treat that as the shape of the requirement rather than the requirement itself. The threshold that applies to a given procurement, and the version of the policy note in force for it, are set by the buyer and stated in the contract notice. Central government departments, arm's-length bodies and the wider public sector apply it differently, and a growing number of private-sector buyers now ask for the same document with no policy note behind it at all. Read the notice rather than assuming.

It also applies further down than the organisation that signs the contract. If you supply a company that bids for public contracts, the emissions question reaches you through them: their scope 3 is your scope 1 and 2, and they cannot answer it without you. That is the most common route by which a business that never bids for a government contract ends up needing a Carbon Reduction Plan anyway.

NCZ measures the emissions the plan rests on, at four levels from a free Blue Award to Platinum Certification, and verifies the result independently.

Last reviewed: September 2026

What is the spend threshold for a Carbon Reduction Plan?

The figure the requirement is usually quoted around is £5 million: a compliant Carbon Reduction Plan is a prerequisite for bidding on UK government contracts over that value. That is the number to plan against if you are deciding whether this will reach you.

But the threshold for any particular procurement is the buyer's to set, and it is stated in the contract notice. Contracts above defined thresholds reference the policy note's requirements and expect a publicly accessible plan; what those thresholds are, and which policy note version applies, varies between departments and across the wider public sector. Checking the notice takes a minute and is the only way to be certain.

Two things make the threshold less decisive than it looks. Buyers below it increasingly ask for the same document voluntarily, because it is a useful way to compare suppliers. And private-sector buyers ask for it with no policy note at all, as part of their own scope 3 reporting. In practice the question is less often whether you are above a threshold than when someone will ask.

Failing to provide a compliant plan when one is required can materially damage bid competitiveness, and a plan cannot be produced credibly at short notice: it needs a measured baseline behind it.

Last reviewed: September 2026

What must a compliant Carbon Reduction Plan contain?

A high-quality Carbon Reduction Plan is concise, transparent and auditable. Eight components are what a public-sector evaluator expects to find.

First, an organisational profile and declaration: legal name, trading names, a named contact, a declaration of alignment with the procurement requirement, and board-level sign-off. Second, baseline emissions and methodology: a stated reporting period and baseline year, scope 1 and scope 2 emissions, and the scope 3 categories relevant to you, using GHG Protocol categories. Third, targets and timelines: short-term reduction targets over five to ten years and a long-term net zero ambition, stating whether targets are science-based and whether they are validated or in development. Fourth, reduction measures and an action plan: specific interventions with owners, timelines and estimated emissions impact.

Fifth, data quality, verification and tools: data sources, assumptions, emissions factors, the accounting standard applied, and any third-party verification. Sixth, governance, resources and supplier engagement. Seventh, residual emissions and removals, showing reduction first and removals only for what is genuinely unavoidable. Eighth, monitoring and continuous improvement: an annual review cycle, clear KPIs, and the plan kept publicly accessible.

Compliance is now the baseline. Plans are increasingly judged on quality, transparency and credibility rather than on their existence, and the fifth component is where most of them are weakest.

Last reviewed: September 2026