The CO₂ Performance Ladder gives insight into your organisation’s emissions and offers tools for structural improvement. By working to certify your government organisation on the Ladder, you also set a good example to residents and businesses when it comes to emissions reduction. In this blog we explain which benefits the CO₂ Performance Ladder offers for governments organisations and how you can become certified to the Ladder step by step. The municipality of the Hague also shares lessons from its certification process.
More than 90 Dutch government organisations are now certified on the CO₂ Performance Ladder, and dozens more are in the process of certification. From local authorities to ministries, from small and manageable to large and complex organisations.
There are several reasons why you might choose to certify your government organisation on the CO₂ Performance Ladder.
One of the benefits of the Ladder is that it gives you precise insight into emissions within scope 1 and 2. These include the emissions from your vehicle fleet and from the buildings you own and/or manage. By determining what falls within your sphere of influence and what does not, you set the organisational boundary.
Many governments have set their own CO₂ reduction targets. The CO₂ Performance Ladder can help your organisation achieve these climate goals in a structured way, with concrete actions and measures, and so meet the goals of national and international climate agreements.
Work on CO₂ reduction often takes place in separate projects across different departments. The CO₂ Performance Ladder brings these projects together in a central management system, giving you a clear overview of all initiatives across your entire organisation and their results.
Taking measures for CO₂ reduction with the help of the Ladder can deliver major cost savings, particularly through energy savings – for example by using less electricity or replacing natural-gas heating with residual heat. Measures may cost money to begin with, but they often pay for themselves in the long term.
The Ladder overlaps with other standards and obligations, such as the Energy Efficiency Directive (EED). Using the Ladder can help you meet these standards. For both the Ladder and the EED you can use 2021 as the reference year when drawing up your climate footprint. Please note: the organisational boundary of the Ladder may differ from that of the EED.
As a government organisation you have an important exemplary role in the energy transition and CO₂ reduction. By becoming certified to the Ladder you show that you are actively contributing yourself. By setting a good example, you increase the chance that residents and businesses will also commit to emission reduction.
“With a CO₂ Performance Ladder certificate you show that your organisation has your CO₂ reduction efforts more than in order, and you set a good example to the outside world.”
Ghislaine Duvalois, Program Manager SKAO
In these seven steps you can become certified to the CO₂ Performance Ladder.
It all starts with decision-making. Your organisation’s executive board decides whether you will start working with the CO₂ Performance Ladder. Once they are convinced and have given their approval, you have a mandate to set everything in motion.
Next, it is important to appoint someone to lead the project, to free up budget and capacity, and to involve the rest of the organisation. The Ladder only stands a chance of success with broad support. That means assembling a multidisciplinary team from the very start, with representatives from all layers of the organisation, from sustainability and procurement to HR and communications.
After your organisation has decided to become certified, it takes roughly six months to a year to organise everything. The first step here is to determine the organisational boundary. With this you establish which entities – such as property and mobility – you include partly or fully when drawing up your climate footprint. The relevant Handbook prescribes how to do this.
Read more here about determining your organisation’s organisational boundary.
Although the audit does not take place until the very end of the process, it is best to approach a certification body (CB) at an early stage. CBs often have full schedules, and by setting a date for the initial audit in advance, you can plan your internal audit in good time. This gives you enough time to make adjustments.
It is also advisable to submit your established organisational boundary to your CB before proceeding. If these boundaries are not set correctly at the start, you may run into extra work later in the process or during the audit.
Read more here about choosing a certification body.
After establishing the organisational boundary, you can start drawing up your CO₂ footprint. Here you collect the data for all emissions within your boundary. The first time you do this, it will take some time. Once everything is in place, in subsequent years you only need to update it. Important to know: the first time, everything does not have to be perfect straight away. The main thing is to collect and structure as much data as possible and to lay a foundation.
Based on your climate footprint you set reduction goals. Since most government organisations initially focus on Step 1 (emissions within their own organisation), you set short-term emission-reduction goals of one to three years. You link your goals to an action plan with measures. You do not have to think of these measures yourself; you can find them in the Measure list. You are also free to take actions that are not on this list.
To ensure a continual improvement process, the CO₂ Performance Ladder works with a Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. This means you must continually monitor the progress of your actions and measures. When necessary, you adjust, for example by taking additional measures.
The final step in the process is the audit, carried out by the certification body you have chosen. Here the auditor checks whether you meet the requirements on the relevant Step, laid out in the Handbook. Based on the audit, you may still need to adjust some things. You then have a few weeks to do so. Is everything in order? Then you receive your CO₂ Performance Ladder certificate.
The new Handbook of the CO₂ Performance Ladder contains several new or amended elements, such as appointing key persons, communication requirements and partnerships. You can find more about all the requirements of Handbook 4.0 here:
“Support means that CO₂ reduction does not rest solely on the shoulders of the QHSE manager, but that you do it together, as an organisation.”
Ghislaine Duvalois, Program Manager SKAO
In early 2026, The Hague was the first large municipality in the Netherlands to achieve certification on version 4.0 of the CO₂ Performance Ladder 4.0, at Step 1. Jody Milder, sustainability adviser at the municipality of The Hague, shares five valuable lessons from their certification process.
“As a large municipality we manage or own many buildings. In some cases we even share buildings with other parties, such as the police. So it was quite a lot of research to work out what did and did not fall within our sphere of influence and what we had to include in our organisational boundary. In the end we looked at the buildings for which we pay the energy bill, or part of it. We spent a lot of time on this; fortunately we had started in good time.”
“We had scheduled our internal and initial audits very close together – only about a month apart. We also carried out the internal audit during the summer holidays, so few people were available. As a result, we ultimately had too little time to implement the points for improvement from the internal audit before the initial audit took place. The auditor also pointed this out. Next time we will make sure there are at least two months between the two audits.”
“During the initial audit we had a discussion with the auditor about a few elements. One of these was the requirement regarding communication – about how and where you communicate about everything. We could not quite work it out, so in the end we put more information on our website than necessary. In hindsight, we would have done better to consult the Handbook and the literal text of the requirement straight away. This would have saved a lot of unnecessary time and discussion.”
“When we started working with the Ladder in 2023 we enlisted the help of an external consultant. We leaned on them heavily, certainly in the first year. In the second year we did more ourselves, and in the third year the adviser was only involved for a check and for the internal audit. From now on we will do the latter ourselves, with an internal audit service. An external consultant can therefore be useful – certainly at the start – but is not always necessary.”
“Many municipalities and other government organisations have gone before us when it comes to a Ladder certification. So these parties also have valuable knowledge and experience in house. Since 2025, in the Netherlands, this has been brought together for various Ladder target groups in Communities of Practice (CoPs). This CoP is very valuable. For example, we benefited greatly from advice from other municipalities on determining the organisational boundary. You can learn an enormous amount from comparable organisations.”
If you have questions about this topic, please contact us.
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