Any government urging the nation to address climate change needs to lead by way of example and for 15 years, successive administrations have sought to do so through the Greening Government Commitments. Under the initiative, 22 governmental departments and their arm’s-length bodies have applied in-house means of mitigating climate change and improving sustainability through rolling out ever-stricter environmental targets. These include reducing impacts from water consumption, landfill waste and business flights; implementing carbon-cutting measures across the civil estate; and, most recently, accommodating power-hungry datacentres. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has responsibility for the GGC framework.
All this matters because, with more than 500,000 staff across the UK and producing almost 1.7 million tonnes of greenhouse gases a year, the civil service’s carbon footprint is similar to that of a medium-sized town. Not only that, but NHS emissions alone account for 4% of England’s total carbon footprint. Trimming the carbon fat from these operations is not just politically symbolic; it is impactful.
Earlier this year, the government belatedly published GGC data for three financial years, covering April 2021 (three years late) to March 2024. At the time of writing, Defra was unable to say when 2024-25 data would be published. A spokesperson said: “Given the wide and diverse scope of GGCs, the need to collate and quality assure data, and a time lag on data being available from utility providers, it takes time to produce a comprehensive picture of performance.”
The next round of commitments, for 2025-30, were supposed to apply from April 2025, but have not yet been published (the spokesperson said Defra was “reviewing the next set of GGCs to ensure that they align with the government’s priorities”).
The latest data measures progress against a 2017-18 baseline and paints an uneven picture: positive in parts (reductions in emissions and landfill, collectively saving millions of pounds) but revealing a systematic lack of preparedness for planning for long-term climate change impacts. The euphemism “working towards” is regularly deployed when a department has failed to meet a target.
There’s good news in relation to the cornerstone of climate action, greenhouse gas reduction. In 2023-24, the government’s overall emissions were 41% lower than the baseline, cutting carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) from 2.9 million tonnes in 2017-18 to 1.7 million tonnes. In addition, by 2023-24, 11 departments had met or even exceeded their individual overall emissions targets for 2025, including HM Revenue and Customs, the Department of Health and Social Care and the Food Standards Agency.
These reductions in energy consumption saved the government an estimated £298m on bills in 2023-24. Across the three years of the frameworks, these reductions amount to an estimated £753m in savings. The Cabinet Office, Department for Culture, Media and Sport and Office for National Statistics routinely met or exceeded most emissions targets.
“Trimming the carbon fat from these operations is not just politically symbolic; it is impactful”
Importantly, the biggest energy guzzlers, the Ministry of Defence (covering military bases and hardware) and Ministry of Justice (which also includes prisons), both made significant emissions cuts. The MoD, which typically accounts for around half of all government emissions, cut emissions from a baseline of 1.34 million tonnes CO2e to 900,000 tonnes in 2024, beating its 30% reduction target by three percentage points. While the MoJ missed its target of a 41% cut in baseline emissions, its 31% cut reduced emissions by 120,000 tonnes of CO2e. Defra – with, presumably, the incentive to lead by example – only reduced emissions by 24% in 2023-24, missing its target of a 50% cut.
The phasing out of diesel and petrol cars has proved politically awkward for all parties, but the latest data suggests government is leading by example. A commitment for 25% of the government car fleet to be ultra-low emission vehicles by December 2022 was exceeded, with ULEVs accounting for 30%. The standout is DHSC, where ULEVs account for 90% of the 2,439 departmental cars; while 39% of the Department for Transport’s 4,530 vehicles met this category.
Progress on cutting emissions from departmental flights is more mixed. Overall, government reduced its emissions from domestic business flights by 28% compared to the baseline – just missing a collective target of 30% cuts. In 2017-18, domestic flights produced 14,687 tonnes CO2e, dropping to 10,636 tonnes CO2e in 2023-24. Almost all departments made cuts exceeding the 30% target.
Underlying trends, however, suggest this progress is being undone. After two years of substantial flight reductions, emissions from MoD flights rose in 2023-24, from 4,071 tonnes to 6,356 tonnes CO2e – just a 3% cut against its baseline. Other departments reported similar 2023-24 trends, though Defra says this is likely due to Covid-related flight restrictions distorting data earlier in the recording period.
International flight data also appears to be headed in the wrong direction for similar reasons. Defra was unable to provide a baseline figure or targets but the collective distance flown across all departments has almost tripled, from 467 million km in 2021-22 to 1.5 billion km in 2023-24. The Cabinet Office’s distance travelled internationally by air rose from 2.15 million km to 4.7 million km; Defra’s total jumped from 2.9 million km to 22.5 million km; the MoD’s rose from 328 million km to 1.1 billion km. The Defra spokesperson noted that “the MoD has many international commitments, including military attaché work and senior officer and staff meetings with international counterparts”.
Efforts to tackle government waste and resources have been positive. In 2023-24, government produced 153,613 tonnes of waste: 18%, or nearly 35,000 tonnes, lower than the baseline (against a 15% target). Reductions in waste saved government an estimated £8.6m from 2021-22 to 2023-24. The biggest waste producers cleaned up their acts – the MoJ cut waste from 50,900 tonnes to 43,000 tonnes (a reduction of 16%) and the MoD from 47,300 tonnes to 39,000 tonnes (18%). HMRC achieved the biggest proportional cut, of 67% against the baseline. Meaningful progress also appears to have been made when it comes to landfill, with just 4% of waste sent to landfill in all three years; by way of comparison, 13% of waste was sent to landfill in 2017-18, the baseline year. Several departments, including the Cabinet Office, Home Office and the now-defunct Department for International Trade, reported years in which they sent no waste to landfill.
By contrast, water-consumption targets have been missed by a significant margin. In 2023-24, water consumption was 1% lower than the baseline, well short of the 8% cut required. Even so, over the three reporting years, consumption dropped by 5.2 million m3 – equivalent to around 2,100 Olympic swimming pools – saving an estimated £11m.
"Increasing demand for AI and other energy-heavy computing has driven rapid rises in CO2 emissions from the datacentres needed to power new technology"
More recent GGCs relate to climate change adaptation. Departments are required to conduct a climate change risk assessment across their estates and operations to better understand risk, to target areas that need greater resilience and then develop a climate change adaptation action plan. By 2023-24, just seven departments had met these requirements. Departments and partner organisations were also expected to develop and deliver nature recovery plans for their land, estates, development and operations, such as tree planting, woodland cover and pollinator-friendly habitats. By April 2025, just 11 departments (including Defra, MoJ and DfT) had achieved this.
In the lifetime of the GGCs, increasing demand for AI and other energy-heavy computing has driven rapid rises in CO2 emissions from the datacentres needed to power new technology. The Greening Government: ICT and digital services strategy, published alongside the GGCs, shows how datacentres now account for 24% of IT emissions, behind end-user devices such as PCs, laptops and smartphones (33%) and IT equipment such as monitors (27%). In a blog at the start of 2025, Defra’s chief digital and information officer, Chris Howes, described “steady, though not dramatic, improvement in the data reported”. The MoD managed to cut these emissions by 19% from 2022-23 to 2023-24, while DHSC made a 35% cut, collectively saving more than 47,000 tonnes of CO2e. However, Howes cautioned that “the increasing digitisation of government continues to create upward pressure on emissions and waste targets”.
In a late 2024 report on government’s approach to the environment and climate change, the National Audit Office praised GGCs for providing “a stable framework”. However, it found that “more active leadership” was needed from the centre of government to address what the watchdog described as “a patchwork of different measurement and reporting frameworks for climate and environmental metrics and targets across the public sector”.
Responding to the latest GGC data, Toby Perkins, chair of parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, called on ministers “to provide reassurance” that momentum had not been lost. “The Greening Government Commitments are an important demonstration to the public that policymakers take seriously the need to decarbonise in our own back yard as much as in industries across the economy,” he said. “I would like to see renewed focus on delivering genuine sustainability within government.”
The message that GGCs send out is important for government “to demonstrate leadership in terms of meeting carbon targets”, says Grace Henderson, civil service coordinator at the Carbon Literacy Project, which organises carbon-reduction training to a range of government departments (12,000 civil servants have been certified as “carbon literate”). The implementation of GGCs is not just down to environmental and sustainability teams; instead, a culture of cutting carbon should be embedded into departmental thinking in the same way as equality, diversity and inclusion and other policies, Henderson says. “It’s about empowering everyone in a department, not just the delivery teams, giving them the skills and motivation and making people aware of the many co-benefits of cutting carbon, such as wellbeing and cost efficiencies.”
This article first appeared in CSW's winter 2026 magazine