Should a small firm count it?
It's your choice. The GHG Protocol and the government's PPN 006 technical standard both list teleworking as an optional part of Scope 3 category 7, employee commuting. Three reasons to include it anyway:
- It keeps your commuting figures honest. If staff move from the office to home, commuting falls. Without homeworking, your plan shows the whole drop as a cut, when part of it has simply moved into people's homes.
- The data is easy. You already know roughly who works from home and how often.
- Buyers increasingly ask. Customer questionnaires often ask how you treat hybrid working. "Included, using the government factor" is a good answer.
Whichever you decide, say so in your method note and treat every year the same way.
The calculation
Full-time-equivalent hours worked from home × 0.32393 kg CO2e = homeworking emissions. The government publishes one factor per hour worked by one full-time employee, and it has two parts:
| Part | kg CO2e per FTE hour (2026) | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Office equipment | 0.02159 | A laptop or PC, monitor, phone, printer and lighting, about 150 W in all |
| Heating | 0.30234 | Extra gas heating in a home that would otherwise be empty, averaged over the year |
| Combined | 0.32393 | The figure most firms use |
Heating is about 93% of the total. The government assumes heating runs ten hours a day from October to March, and that a third of staff share their home with someone who would be in anyway, so only two thirds of homeworking adds any heating.
A worked example
20 staff work from home two days a week, 7.5-hour days, for 46 working weeks a year:
- 20 × 2 days × 7.5 hours × 46 weeks = 13,800 hours
- 13,800 × 0.32393 = 4,470 kg CO2e, or 4.47 tonnes
- That's about 224 kg per person per year.
Part-time staff count their actual hours, so two people working half-time at home make one full-time equivalent. Our post on employee commuting without surveying everyone shows how to work out the office days alongside.
Where to get the hours
- Your hybrid working policy, if people follow it. "Two days at home" times your headcount is a reasonable first estimate.
- Desk booking or building access data shows who came in, so the rest of their working days were at home or elsewhere.
- A short staff survey, asked at the same time as the commuting questions: how many days a week at home, on average.
Things that trip people up
- Counting people instead of hours. The factor is per full-time-equivalent hour, not per person or per day.
- Counting a day twice. A home day has no commute. Don't add the commute and the homeworking for the same day.
- Putting it in Scope 2. Your staff pay for their home energy, so it is your Scope 3, not your Scope 2.
- Comparing years without checking the factor. The office equipment part fell by 31% in the 2026 set, because the UK electricity factor fell. The heating part hasn't changed since 2022 apart from a technical update to the warming values it uses.
How good is the factor?
It is an estimate built on assumptions the government sets out openly: every home heated by gas, a fixed heating season, and a typical home office. It won't be exact for any one person, but it is the standard UK figure, it is free, and it treats every firm the same way, which is what buyers comparing plans want.
How Carbon Recycling helps
Enter homeworking hours alongside your commuting survey and Carbon Recycling applies the right year's government factor, keeps both in category 7, and carries them into your Carbon Reduction Plan with the method stated.