Following on the Education & Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) recommendation that colleges in England should submit their carbon reporting through the Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR), we are now delighted to bring to EAUC FE members a SECR tool developed in partnership with HI Group (previously Hillside Environmental Services).

The SECR tool will provide you with an easy-to-use solution to creating your SECR. All you need to do is to enter your raw data on energy and fuel usage and the tool automatically converts this into your carbon equivalent figures. It then produces your results in a best practice SECR format. So all you need to do is to either download as a PDF and it is ready to be uploaded onto your website to ensure you comply with the public reporting requirements. Or you can export the data and place within your normal reporting formats.

This tool will save members time in developing your own spreadsheets to collate the data and then to convert the data. The tool does this all for you and you can be confident that the conversions have been correctly applied.

We thank College of West Anglia, Gloucestershire College, NCG and Wakefield College in helping us with the beta testing of this tool.

Only EAUC Members can access the Tool below - you will need to sign in to access.

Access a further resource from HI Group that guides you on how to meet the Streamlined Energy & Carbon Reporting (SECR) specifications and use the GRI Standards and GHG protocols in your reporting.

Watch the webinar below to talk you through on how to use the Tool.

Benefits:

• Free to use for EAUC Members
• Compliant with EFSA Guidance and recommended for use by ESFA
• Uses the Government’s Conversion Factors for Greenhouse Gases
• Allows you to back date and set your Base Year back to 2007
• Compliant reporting format – to be used standalone or part of your wider reporting framework
• Includes guidance on where you can find the data
• Allows you to report based on floor area, staff and student numbers
• You can include Scope 3 emissions as you further develop your carbon reporting
• Will be updated annually to ensure latest guidance and conversion factors are incorporated
• View college SECR reports to date

SECR is for colleges in England. Scottish colleges please refer to the Scottish Government PBCCD reporting templates.

Several events have looked at this SECR, you will find a webinar hearing from Sally Farnhill and Chris Patterson from the Education & Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) to provide background and advice on the new reporting requirement. Joined by Julie Thornton at Wakefield College and Sue Brown from College of West Anglia on how they have approached collating carbon emissions data, here.

How to use the Tool webinars videos can be viewed below:

The webinar which took place on February 11th 2022 on How to use the SECR Tool can be viewed below: