Monk Spaces worked with Infosys to develop a GHG emissions baseline for the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) supply chain. The scope covered seven key technology, consulting, and managed service vendors. The baseline is structured for annual updates.

Data Collection

The seven companies span different sectors, fiscal calendars, and reporting formats. The challenge was to create a comparable baseline despite differences in scale, geography, and disclosures. The most recent ESG or sustainability report for each company was identified and used. All data used in the baseline was publicly available and sourced from disclosures.

Emission values were transcribed from official data tables, appendices, and sustainability indices, and organised into the following categories:

• Scope 1 – Direct emissions from owned or controlled sources.
• Scope 2 – Indirect energy emissions, recorded as both location-based and market-based.
• Scope 3 – All 15 value chain categories, along with work-from-home emissions.
• Biogenic – Emissions from biogenic sources, where disclosed.

The baseline also documents each company’s carbon offset and removal portfolio, where available. It includes project types, locations, verification standards, and credit volumes.

Intensity Metrics & Attribution

Absolute emissions are not comparable across companies of different sizes and sectors. Two normalised metrics were calculated to address this.

• Revenue-based Intensity – tCO₂e per million USD of annual revenue.
• Employee-based Intensity – tCO₂e per full-time equivalent.

To support procurement decisions, an attribution model was built into the baseline. It estimates the NHS share of each vendor’s emissions based on revenue contribution. The baseline captures both total company emissions and the share attributable to the NHS.

Third-Party Audit

The baseline was independently audited by Sustainability and Strategy, a consultancy specialising in ESG assurance and GHG inventory verification. The audit covered data accuracy, methodology consistency, carbon credit checks, and documented assumptions.

Annual Revisions

The baseline is updated annually as vendors publish new ESG disclosures. All comparative metrics are recalculated each cycle. Over time, this creates a longitudinal dataset to track whether vendor emissions are declining, plateauing, or increasing relative to the baseline.

The baseline supports more consistent and comparable evaluation of supply chain emissions in NHS procurement.