Home Emission Factors United Kingdom Factors Update – Nov 2025

United Kingdom Factors Update – Nov 2025

Last updated on Dec 05, 2025

November update summary

The emission factors were inflation-adjusted to July-September (third quarter) 2025, using the latest CPI data available. Overall inflation has increased by 1.86% (on average) compared to the first quarter in 2025; as such, the majority of emissions factors have been reduced, so that the emissions assigned per pound of spending remain consistent in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. This ensures that higher prices due to inflation do not artificially increase the estimated emissions associated with purchases.

Some areas experienced more significant changes in inflation than others. For example, the CPI for water supply increased by more than 26%, while liquid fuels decreased by around 11%. Furthermore, the CPI value for passenger transport by air increased by 58% over the last 6 months (due to the continued rise in air travel prices), leading to a reduction in the emissions factor by 36%. The CPI for passenger transport by sea increased by 19%, leading to a reduction in the emissions intensity for transport by ferry by 16%.

The majority of the other CPI value changes for the relevant categories are <+/- 5%.

The increase in inflation on water supply is due to the increase in water prices in April 2025. The reason for the increase in pricing is, in part, to fund essential infrastructure investment needed to meet new environmental standards.

The reduction in UK liquid fuel prices in 2025 is primarily due to a global oil market oversupply, with production growth outpacing demand.

May update summary

In this annual release, we have made a number of updates to our UK dataset emissions factors (EFs).

Cogo’s carbon data partner Small World Consulting (SWC) has completed its annual EEIO (Environmentally Extended Input-Output) model update and provided the resulting spend-based emission factors to Cogo. This is the latest-available data which Cogo has inflation adjusted to January-March 2025. Note that the SWC data incorporated into previous updates was based on pre-Covid data (from 2019, then inflation adjusted) rather than using the latest available data as they were deemed as not being representative of the economy at the time. This resumption of using the latest-available data explains some of the larger than normal year-on-year differences that can be seen in the emissions factors.

These include significant (>20%) decreases in the EFs for the following categories:

Donations and feesCharitable donations and grantsDonations and feesMembership feesProfessional servicesAdvertising and marketingProfessional servicesAccountingProfessional servicesRecruitment and HRProfessional servicesManagement, consulting and PRConsumables and suppliesPaintProfessional servicesOtherBanking, tax and insuranceMortgagesBanking, tax and insuranceInvestments and loansBanking, tax and insuranceDebt collectionBanking, tax and insuranceOtherProfessional servicesCredit check services

Also significant increases (>30%) in the EFs for the following categories:

TravelParkingCompany vehiclesTolls and registrationTransport and distributionOtherConsumables and suppliesMedical suppliesConsumables and suppliesOtherConsumables and suppliesOffice suppliesTransport and distributionCouriersTravelBoats and ferriesTravelFlightsPremises and facilitiesRent including utilities

Additionally, this update also includes a number of methodology upgrades to Cogo’s Applied Models.

Grocery and Specialty Categories

Improvements and updates made to more recent source data leads to changes in the carbon intensities for Butcher, Bakery, Fishmonger and Greengrocer, which increased by >30%.

Energy Categories

  • The emissions factor for the category of ‘Utilities, software & waste - Electricity’ decreased by 30% as a result of electricity price changes for small to medium sized businesses (SMEs). We selected the price for the businesses based on the electricity consumption data for SMEs in the UK that can be found in the literature here.

  • The emissions factor for ‘Utilities, software & waste - Gas’ decreased by 50% as a result of increases in the gas price for SMEs. We also adapted our approach to match the gas price to the consumption data of SMEs found in the literature. as for businesses the price depends on how much gas a business is consuming.

  • The emissions factor for ‘Utilities, software & waste - Electricity and Gas’ decreased by 38% as a result of the price change in electricity (mentioned above) and gas price changes. In addition, we have adapted our approach on calculating the contribution of electricity and gas to the overall bill based on more recent consumption data for SMEs.

Waste Categories

The emissions factors for Waste categories increased by more than 100%. This change reflects a shift to using EEIO-based emissions factors, rather than estimating them from waste volumes and prices separately. Since small businesses are unlikely to track general and recycling waste in detail, and the overall waste footprint is typically small, we have simplified the method by applying standard EEIO emissions factors for the categories.

Utilities, software and wasteConstruction wasteUtilities, software and wasteGeneral wasteUtilities, software and wasteRecycling

New Category Addition

We have developed Business EV Charging emissions factors. These relate to public charging of company vehicles. The application of these EFs is via the new category of Company vehicles>EV charging.