We measured our own carbon footprint. Here is what we found

We build tools that help businesses measure the carbon and cost impact of their digital operations. Measuring our own was never a question. This is our first public sustainability report, covering 1 March 2025 to 28 February 2026. We used our own platform, HNR to ZERO, to measure our digital infrastructure. Everything else follows the GHG Protocol Corporate Standard, with reference to UK SRS S1 and S2 guidance.

We aren't required to publish this. HNR sits outside the mandatory scope of UK SECR and current disclosure regulations. We did it because we believe you should hold yourself to the same standard you ask of others.

Growing fast, keeping emissions in check

This past year, our headcount grew by 45.5% and revenue grew materially. Absolute emissions went up too, from 6.15 tCO2e in FY2024/25 to 9.64 tCO2e in FY2025/26. That is a 56.8% rise in absolute terms, but our revenue per tonne of CO2e improved by nearly 3x, from £12,964 to £51,140. Emissions per person rose just 7.7%, from 0.918 to 0.989 tCO2e per FTE.

For a company growing at our pace, that is about as good an outcome as you can realistically aim for. Absolute emissions will rise with headcount. The numbers that matter are intensity: carbon per person and carbon per pound of revenue. Both are moving in the right direction.

Let’s be upfront: part of this rise reflects better measurement, not new impact. We expanded our reporting boundary to include two categories we didn't track before: embodied carbon from purchased IT assets and our AWS cloud infrastructure. Together, those added around 0.43 tCO2e. Some of the increase is simply us getting more rigorous.

Where our emissions come from

HNR has no offices, no company vehicles, and no Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions. Our entire footprint sits in Scope 3. Here is the full breakdown:

Being fully remote means we carry no commercial office footprint. The trade-off is that our team's home energy use is our largest category at 55.7%. We calculate this using the UK government's 2025 homeworking conversion factors applied to FTE working hours.

Business travel accounts for 39.8%. That covers project travel across Vienna, Oulu, Berlin, and Turin as part of the 5G-EMERGE programme, IBC in Amsterdam, Summit on the Summit, and client meetings in London. Our default for UK travel is rail. Where international travel is unavoidable and no practical rail alternative exists, we fly and consolidate trips.

The two new categories we tracked for the first time are embodied carbon from IT equipment and our AWS cloud infrastructure measured directly through HNR to ZERO. The AWS figure for FY2025/26 was 188 kg CO2e.

What we are doing about it

Nothing radical here. Just consistent, practical choices:

• Rail-first for all UK travel.

• Fully remote operations with no office estate to maintain.

• Hardware kept for as long as it remains fit for purpose.

• Quarterly AWS workload reviews, assessing cost and carbon together.

For FY2026/27, we aim to hold per-FTE emissions at or below 0.989 tCO2e, reduce business travel emissions per person by being more deliberate about necessary trips, and expand our Scope 3 coverage to include procurement spend beyond IT assets.

Why we published this

Sustainability reporting is most meaningful when it is a choice. We work with organisations trying to get a clear, honest picture of what their technology costs, financially and environmentally. We couldn’t stand behind that work if we didn’t do the same ourselves.

To read the full methodology, the data, and our targets in detail, you can find the complete FY2025/26 sustainability report HERE.