Net-Zero Roadmap: ESG Compliance

A net-zero roadmap turns a target into a costed, dated plan you can actually deliver

A net-zero target is easy to announce. A net-zero roadmap is the hard part: the costed, sequenced set of dated actions that actually makes next year’s reported emissions lower than this year’s, all the way to a defensible net-zero position. Most corporate net-zero commitments fail in the gap between the two — a target sits in the annual report, and there is no delivery plan behind it to hit it. That gap is not just a delivery problem. An unquantified “we will be net zero by [year]” claim, with no credible plan behind it, is exactly the kind of statement the Competition and Markets Authority’s Green Claims Code was written to challenge. A roadmap is what makes the claim safe as well as achievable.

We build the roadmap as a piece of delivered work, not a slide. It starts from a properly built greenhouse gas baseline, sets near-term and long-term targets that can be aligned to a recognised framework where that earns its keep, sequences the decarbonisation measures in the order that actually cuts emissions fastest for the money, and states honestly what each lever does and does not count towards. It aligns to the two things a UK company genuinely has to answer to on net zero: the statutory 2050 target, and — where you bid for public work — the Carbon Reduction Plan a tender now demands. This is one of five connected services in our ESG compliance programme, and it is the half of the job that most reporting-led providers skip.

The statutory target the roadmap has to align to

Before any measure is chosen, the roadmap is anchored to the destination that is fixed in law. The UK’s net-zero target is statutory: the Climate Change Act 2008, as amended by the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order 2019, commits the country to at least a 100% reduction in the net UK carbon account against the 1990 baseline by 2050. That is the national trajectory your own company target sits inside, and it is why a credible corporate roadmap sets a long-term net-zero date that is consistent with it rather than an arbitrary round number picked for a headline.

Individual companies set their own dated targets towards that destination, and they are free to be more ambitious than 2050 — many are, and many of the combined authorities whose regions they operate in have set earlier dates that raise the local expectation. What a company is not free to do is claim a target it has no plan to meet. The discipline of the roadmap is to make the corporate target land somewhere real: a near-term target roughly five to ten years out that the current plan can actually deliver, and a long-term net-zero target that the trajectory genuinely reaches. Where you want that framework externally validated, the Science Based Targets initiative is the recognised route — and here we are careful about the honesty of the claim, because SBTi validation is voluntary and market-led, not a legal requirement, and we say so rather than dressing it up as a duty.

Baseline first — you cannot sequence a roadmap without a starting line

A roadmap is only as good as the number it starts from, so the first dependency is a properly built baseline. Everything on the roadmap — the target, the intensity ratio, the sequencing of measures, the annual check against the trajectory — is measured against a base year greenhouse gas inventory built to the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard. If that baseline is wrong, the whole plan is measuring progress against the wrong line. That is why our carbon footprint and baseline service is the foundation the roadmap is built on, not a separate exercise.

The baseline also decides where the roadmap has to concentrate. A Scope 1 and 2 inventory tells you how much of your footprint is direct fuel use (Scope 1 — the gas in your boilers, the fuel in your own fleet) versus purchased energy (Scope 2 — principally electricity, and also purchased heat, steam and cooling). For Scope 2 we calculate both the location-based and the market-based figure, because the moment a roadmap recommends buying renewable electricity, those two figures move differently and both have to be reported honestly. And where value-chain emissions are in scope, the Scope 3 and supply-chain service usually reveals that the largest part of the footprint sits outside the company’s own operations altogether — which changes what a genuine net-zero roadmap has to do, because a plan that only addresses Scope 1 and 2 while ignoring a dominant Scope 3 is not a net-zero plan at all. We are honest about that up front rather than selling a roadmap that quietly ignores the biggest number.

The decarbonisation levers, sequenced in the order that actually cuts emissions

The heart of the roadmap is the sequence of measures. The order matters, because doing the cheap, high-certainty things first frees capital and reduces the load that the expensive measures then have to cover. We sequence in roughly this order, costed against your actual sites and data rather than a generic template.

• Energy efficiency first. The cheapest tonne of carbon is the one you never use. Building fabric, heating and cooling controls, lighting, compressed-air and process efficiency, and simple operational changes reduce demand before anything is generated or bought. This is also where a separate but adjacent duty overlaps for large undertakings — the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS) energy audits — so the efficiency work often has a head start.
• Electrification of heat and transport. Once demand is reduced, the roadmap moves fossil-fuelled loads onto electricity that can be decarbonised: heat pumps replacing gas or oil heating cut Scope 1 fuel use directly, and electrifying a fleet does the same. These are the measures that attack the Scope 1 number that renewables cannot touch.
• On-site generation and power purchase agreements. With demand reduced and loads electrified, on-site solar or a well-structured PPA reduces the market-based Scope 2 figure for the electricity that remains. This is a lever inside the plan, not the plan — more on the honest limits of it below.
• Credible offsetting, last and only for the genuine residual. After the reductions have been made, a small residual usually remains that cannot yet be eliminated. High-quality removals or offsets address that residual — but only the residual, and only with quality that survives scrutiny, never as a way to buy down a number that better sequencing should have reduced first.

That order — reduce, electrify, generate, then offset the residual — is what separates a roadmap that genuinely reaches net zero from one that leans on offsets to paper over avoidable emissions. Each measure on it carries a cost, an emissions saving and a date, so the plan is something a board can fund and a bidder can evidence, not a wish list.

Renewables as an honest Scope 2 lever — what solar and a PPA do and do not count towards

Because on-site solar and power purchase agreements are the measures buyers most often ask about, and the ones most often misrepresented elsewhere, we treat them with particular care. Buying renewable electricity — whether through an on-site solar array or a PPA — can reduce your market-based Scope 2 emissions, the figure under the GHG Protocol’s dual Scope 2 method that reflects the specific electricity you have contracted for. It does not change your location-based figure, which reflects the average grid, and you should report both rather than quietly presenting only the flattering one.

Two honest caveats decide whether the claim is credible or a greenwashing risk. First, it only touches Scope 2. On-site solar does nothing for your Scope 1 fuel use — the gas and the fleet — and nothing for your Scope 3 value chain, which for many businesses is the larger part of the footprint. A company that installs solar and calls itself well on the way to net zero, while its Scope 1 heating and its Scope 3 supply chain are untouched, is overstating what it has done. Second, the credibility depends on quality and additionality. A genuine on-site installation, or a well-structured PPA that supports additional renewable generation, carries real weight. Unbundled renewable certificates bought purely to net down a market-based figure carry far less, and a claim built on them is fragile in a transaction, a tender or a regulator’s challenge. We build the target so a PPA or an array counts where it genuinely should, and no further — which is the difference between a defensible net-zero claim and one that does not survive scrutiny.

Where the roadmap does recommend on-site generation, the practicalities sit downstream of the plan, not inside the disclosure. A grid-connection notification to the local Distribution Network Operator applies to any on-site array — a G98 notification for a small install, G99 for a larger one — and a move to a PPA is a commercial contract rather than a compliance filing. Those are consequences of the roadmap’s recommendation, handled once the plan is agreed, and we are clear about the sequence so a solar array is never dressed up as an ESG strategy in its own right.

The Carbon Reduction Plan a roadmap has to produce for public tenders

For many companies the immediate commercial reason to have a roadmap is not the 2050 target at all — it is a live tender. Under PPN 006 on Carbon Reduction Plans, which replaced and updated the former PPN 06/21 to reflect the Procurement Act 2023, suppliers bidding for major central-government contracts with an estimated value above £5 million a year including VAT must have, and publish, a Carbon Reduction Plan. That plan has to confirm a commitment to net zero by 2050, state the supplier’s current carbon footprint, and set out the measures being taken to reduce it, in a defined format.

A net-zero roadmap is exactly what produces a Carbon Reduction Plan that meets that standard — the baseline is the current footprint, the sequenced measures are the reduction commitments, and the 2050 alignment is the statutory anchor. A missing or non-compliant Carbon Reduction Plan can disqualify an otherwise winning bid, so for a supplier to the public sector this is a commercial move, not a green gesture. Beyond that central-government threshold, the selection questionnaires used by councils, universities and NHS bodies increasingly ask for the same substance — a footprint, reduction targets and a credible plan — so a roadmap that produces a PPN 006-standard plan also answers the wider procurement pressure. Our ESG-for-tenders guidance sets out what a bid actually needs, and the what ESG tenders and PQQs ask for guide walks through it in detail.

How we build and deliver the roadmap

We deliver the roadmap as a piece of consultancy work, applied to your actual estate and data, not a downloadable template. The method runs in four connected stages.

First, we establish or confirm the baseline — the base-year Scope 1 and 2 inventory, with material Scope 3 where it is in scope, built to the GHG Protocol and the UK government conversion factors, so the starting line is defensible. Second, we set the targets — a near-term target the plan can genuinely deliver and a long-term net-zero target consistent with the statutory 2050 destination, aligned to the SBTi framework where external validation earns its keep. Third, we build the costed, sequenced plan — each decarbonisation measure with its emissions saving, its indicative cost and its date, in the reduce-electrify-generate-offset order, modelled against your sites rather than assumed. Fourth, we produce the outputs the business actually needs from it: the internal delivery plan the board funds, and, where you bid for public work, the PPN 006-standard Carbon Reduction Plan the tender requires.

Because it depends on the shape of your estate, the roadmap is scoped rather than priced off a menu. The main drivers are the size of the estate, how many decarbonisation levers have to be modelled and costed, the ambition of the target, and whether material Scope 3 is in scope — a single-site plan with a straightforward efficiency-and-solar sequence is a very different job from a multi-site group roadmap that has to address a dominant value-chain footprint. Our cost guide explains how a programme is scoped, and we are explicit about what a roadmap engagement includes so you are never paying for scope you do not need.

An illustrative roadmap in practice

To show how the pieces fit, here is an illustrative scenario — not a named client, and the figures are indicative only. A privately owned manufacturer of around 320 employees across two sites had crossed the SECR thresholds and had its energy and carbon disclosure due, but no baseline and no in-house capability, and it had just lost a public-sector bid because it could not produce a Carbon Reduction Plan.

The work built a two-site Scope 1 and 2 baseline from meter and fuel data, and a spend-based Scope 3 screen flagged purchased goods and inbound logistics as the two dominant hotspots — which meant a genuine net-zero roadmap had to look well beyond the company’s own operations. The roadmap sequenced energy-efficiency measures first, then electrification of the site’s heating, then a rooftop solar array and a PPA modelled specifically as a lever to cut the market-based Scope 2 figure — honestly flagged as touching Scope 2 only, with the Scope 1 and Scope 3 measures carrying the rest. A near-term target was set to the SBTi framework for external credibility. The output was a costed delivery plan the board could fund and a PPN 006-standard Carbon Reduction Plan that restored the company’s eligibility to bid for the public-sector work it had been shut out of. Illustrative percentages and tonnes only — no fabricated named client, and every lever positioned for exactly what it genuinely counts towards.

Where a net-zero roadmap fits with the rest of the programme

A roadmap does not stand alone. It sits on top of a baseline, it feeds the reporting, and it is shaped by the strategy and materiality work that decides what matters in the first place. Across our programme that means:

• ESG strategy and materiality sets the governance and the priorities the roadmap delivers against — the materiality judgement that decides which issues, and which Scope 3 categories, the plan actually has to address.
• Carbon footprint and baseline is the starting line every target and every measure is sequenced against, with the dual location-based and market-based Scope 2 figures the roadmap needs.
• SECR reporting is where the year-on-year progress shows up — the roadmap is what makes the energy-efficiency narrative in a SECR disclosure a real account of action rather than a paragraph.
• Scope 3 and supply-chain emissions usually contains the largest part of the footprint, which is why a credible roadmap has to engage the value chain, not just the company’s own sites.

To see how a roadmap is anchored to genuinely local net-zero policy, our regional pages set out the combined-authority targets and grid context that shape a plan in a given area — from ESG compliance in Manchester, anchored to the GMCA 2038 target, to London and Birmingham. The honest-limits question at the heart of this page — whether buying solar or a PPA really counts towards net zero — is answered in full in our does solar count towards net zero guide.

Get a costed net-zero roadmap for your business

The first step is a short readiness conversation, not a hard sell. We will tell you whether you already hold a baseline the roadmap can build on, what a near-term target could realistically deliver, whether a PPN 006 Carbon Reduction Plan is the immediate driver, and — honestly — where renewables do and do not move your numbers. If you want the wider picture first, start with our SECR reporting hub or the full ESG compliance service overview. Use the enquiry form below to book that conversation; we respond within one working day.

Government and standards sources, verified 2 July 2026: the Climate Change Act 2008 (as amended by the 2019 Order), PPN 006 on Carbon Reduction Plans, the UK government’s environmental reporting guidelines, and the Science Based Targets initiative (a voluntary standard).