SECR reporting: What Entertainment Organisations Need to Know

Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting, or SECR, has been a legal requirement for large UK businesses since April 2019. And yet, six years on, it's still being treated as an afterthought in too many organisations: bolted onto the annual report at the last minute, signed off without scrutiny, and promptly forgotten until next year. The government's own SECR evaluation published in January 2026 found that while the framework has improved awareness of carbon accounting, there is still significant room for companies to use the data more meaningfully.

In music, media and entertainment, that gap is particularly stark. These are sectors where sustainability credibility is increasingly tied to commercial opportunity; where sponsors, broadcasters, venues and talent are all asking harder questions about environmental performance. Getting SECR right isn't just a legal obligation. It's a signal about whether your organisation takes its own claims seriously.

This guide covers what SECR is, who it applies to, what compliance actually involves, and where organisations tend to go wrong.

In this article:

• What SECR is and what it covers
• Who it applies to, and who's exempt
• What it means specifically for music, media and live events
• What compliance actually looks like
• Common mistakes and misconceptions
• What to do next

Let’s start with the basics.

What SECR is and what it covers

SECR stands for Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting. It was introduced in 2019 to bring corporate energy and carbon reporting into the mainstream, specifically, into the annual accounts that businesses are already required to file.

The core requirement is straightforward. In-scope organisations must disclose their total UK energy consumption (electricity, gas and transport fuels), the greenhouse gas emissions that come with it, an intensity ratio that puts the numbers in context, and a description of what the organisation has actually done to improve energy efficiency over the year.

For quoted companies, global energy use must be reported, not just UK operations.

SECR sits within the UK's broader legislative push toward Net Zero by 2050, a target enshrined in the Climate Change Act 2008 and assessed annually by the Climate Change Committee. It's designed to make emissions data a standard part of how organisations are assessed: by investors, regulators, lenders, and increasingly by the commercial partners they depend on. SECR also sits within a growing web of UK sustainability reporting requirements and the direction of travel is clearly toward more disclosure, not less.

Who SECR applies to

SECR applies to large UK organisations. If your business meets at least two of the following thresholds in a financial year, you're in scope under the Environmental Reporting Guidelines:

• Annual turnover of £36 million or more
• Balance sheet total of £18 million or more
• 250 or more employees

The framework covers quoted companies (those listed on the stock exchange), large unquoted companies, and large Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs). More than 11,000 organisations across the UK are estimated to fall within scope.

There are exemptions, but they're narrow. If your total energy consumption falls below 40,000 kWh during the reporting period, a relatively low threshold, you may be able to claim a low energy exemption. There's also an exemption if disclosure would be "seriously prejudicial" to your business interests, though this is rarely applicable in practice.

In the music, media and entertainment space, the organisations most likely to hit these thresholds include major record labels, broadcasting groups, large talent agencies, venue operators, festival companies, and production houses with significant headcount or turnover. If you're part of a larger corporate group the thresholds may apply at group level rather than entity level, which is worth checking carefully.

What SECR means for music, media and live events

SECR is size-based, not sector-based. But the music, media and entertainment industry has some specific characteristics that shape how the framework plays out in practice and why the stakes are higher here than in many other sectors.

The first is reputational exposure. These are public-facing industries where environmental claims get scrutinised. A broadcaster that makes sustainability commitments on screen but files a weak SECR report is asking to be called out. A festival that promotes its green credentials but can't account for its diesel use is in a fragile position. Greenwashing risk in live events is real, and SECR reporting is one of the places where the gap between claimed and actual performance becomes visible.

The second is energy complexity. Live events and productions involve highly variable, often temporary energy infrastructure, generators, rigging, lighting rigs, broadcast facilities, which don't sit neatly in standard energy billing. Our UK Events and Diesel Use report found that diesel is one of the most significant and most underreported energy sources in the live events sector, precisely because it falls outside the metered electricity data that finance teams typically track. If your SECR return is built on utility bills alone, it's probably incomplete.

The third is commercial pressure from partners. Major brands sponsoring tours, festivals and media productions are increasingly asking for emissions data as part of partnership due diligence. Broadcasters commissioning content are beginning to require production sustainability credentials. And the regulatory environment around sustainability claims is tightening fast. The FCA's Anti-Greenwashing Rule, which came into force in 2024, has made what organisations say about their environmental performance a compliance issue, not just a reputational one. A credible SECR report is part of being able to substantiate those claims. Done well, it's evidence. Done badly, it's a liability.

The fourth is the Scope 3 question. SECR makes Scope 3 reporting optional, but in entertainment, Scope 3 is often where the real story is. Fan travel alone accounts for 77% of live music emissions in the UK, according to research Hope Solutions contributed to alongside MIT, Live Nation, Warner Music Group and Coldplay. Leaving that out of your reporting doesn't make it disappear; it just means you're not accounting for it.

What SECR compliance actually involves

Compliance isn't complicated, but it does require discipline and organisation.

The starting point is confirming your scope and gathering energy data for the full reporting year, electricity, gas, and transport fuel across UK operations. For entertainment businesses, this is often harder than it sounds. Office energy sits in one place, production energy in another, touring fuel somewhere else entirely. Building a complete picture requires deliberate data collection, not just pulling utility bills.

Once you have the data, you convert it to tonnes of CO₂ equivalent (tCO₂e) using government-published emissions factors. SECR requires a split between Scope 1 (direct emissions, fuel combustion, company vehicles, generators) and Scope 2 (indirect emissions from purchased electricity and heat). Scope 3 emissions aren't mandatory, but they're increasingly expected. If you need a primer on how the scopes work, our guide to Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions covers the distinctions clearly.

You then need to calculate an intensity ratio: a metric that puts your absolute emissions figure in context. Emissions per £ million of turnover and emissions per FTE are common choices. For event-based businesses, emissions per event or per attendee can also be meaningful, and are increasingly what partners and funders want to see.

The narrative section, the description of energy efficiency actions taken during the year, is where many organisations do the minimum. That's a wasted opportunity. This is the part of the report where you can demonstrate that sustainability is embedded in how you operate, not just how you communicate. A vague sentence about "ongoing efficiency initiatives" tells nobody anything. Specifics, what changed, what it cost, what it saved, are what build credibility.

All of this is published as part of the Directors' Report in your annual accounts.

Common misconceptions about SECR

"We're an entertainment company, not an industrial one. Our emissions are low." 

Size triggers SECR, not emissions. If you meet two of the three thresholds (turnover, balance sheet, headcount) you're in scope regardless of how you'd characterise your environmental footprint. And as noted above, entertainment businesses often have more significant energy use than they realise once you account for productions, events and travel properly.

"We just need to file the numbers; the narrative section is a formality." 

The narrative description of energy efficiency actions is a legal requirement, not an optional extra. Regulators and investors read it. In entertainment specifically, so do journalists, campaign groups and partners. A credible, specific narrative signals that the data has been thought about. A generic one signals the opposite, and in this sector, that carries reputational risk that goes beyond the regulatory.

"SECR is separate from our ESG and sustainability reporting."

It doesn't have to be, and it shouldn't be. SECR data is directly relevant to broader ESG disclosures and the kind of investor and partner questionnaires that are becoming standard. Organisations that manage these streams separately end up with duplication, inconsistency, and missed opportunities to tell a coherent story.

"Compliance this year means we're done." 

SECR is annual. The expectation is that each year's report builds on the last, showing whether intensity ratios are improving, whether efficiency measures are working, and whether targets are being met. 

What to do next

If SECR is new to your organisation, start with the basics: confirm your scope, audit your energy data sources, and work out where the gaps are. For entertainment businesses, that almost always means going beyond utility bills: productions, events, tours and generators need to be in the picture. Most compliance problems start with data, not intent.

If your organisation is also approaching an ESOS compliance deadline, it's worth reading our guide to ESOS Phase 4: the two frameworks overlap considerably, and building the right data infrastructure once serves both.

If you're already reporting but treating it as a tick-box exercise, ask what you're leaving on the table. Some of the UK's largest investors are pressing the government to accelerate mandatory sustainability reporting standards. In music, media and entertainment, where your environmental reputation is part of your brand, getting ahead of that pressure is worth more than just staying compliant.

At Hope Solutions, we work with organisations across music, media and entertainment to get SECR right. If you want to talk through what that looks like for your organisation, get in touch.