Several newspapers and radio stations have covered a report from the Stockholm Environment Institute (York University), showing the UK’s real greenhouse gas emissions are rising, not falling as the Government suggests.
Carbon dioxide emissions associated with UK consumption increased by 115 million tonnes (18%), between 1992 and 2004, according to SEI. However UK government figure say our emissions dropped 13%.
Both figures are probably true: they measure different things. It is sad that the UK figures as measured by Kyoto criteria are among the best reductions of the developed nations. But it is an illusion. As the SEI figures show, we actually emitted more CO2 overall.
Kyoto deliberately omitted aviation, shipping and embedded energy in imports from its calculations. The SEI approach accounts for those missing items, and the real fact is that Britain’s greenhouse gases outputs are rising.
SEI says:
- Under the Kyoto protocol accounting, the UK's greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2004 were 657 million tonnes
- Total GHG emissions including imports and excluding exports in 2004 were 979 million tonnes
- Our consumer-based GHG emissions are 49% higher than our Kyoto-reported emissions
Trends show that:
- Between 1992 and 2004, Kyoto GHG emissions report a decrease of 13% B
- Between 1992 and 2004, consumer-based GHG emissions increased by 13%.
Phil Woolas – UK Minister of State (environment) responded to the reports on Radio 4 this morning. Paraphrasing him, he commented we commissioned the report at DEFRA and our scientists should be congratulated. It is wrong to say they challenge our emissions figures. It will enhance UK credibility. The headline is misleading. Claims if all countries did this it would be double counting we would have to reduce other countries emissions if we count them here instead.
I am happy with reducing the CO2 emission attributed to developing countries and counting them as our own if we consume or benefit from the products. It’s the overall total that matters, and this is probably a more equitable way to make the measurement. It is the consumers that have to count. It is consumers that create the demand that drive companies to produce wherever in the world to try to satisfy that demand and make a profit. If consumers don’t consume, suppliers won’t supply and thereby won’t emit greenhouse gases.
Mr Woolas’s response fails to face the international transportation issue. Currently aviation and shipping emissions aren’t counted anywhere by anyone so that’s simply got to be corrected. There is no double counting, indeed there’s not even single counting currently.
It will be no surprise to readers that Jersey’s energy strategy reports and CO2 reduction plans play along with this charade. It takes not a lot of hard thinking to realise that an Island that imports everything and with a population that just loves to get of the rock to holiday, our emission from aviation and shipping must be somewhat higher than the Kyoto criteria measured figures. Then factor in all the embedded energy in new house build and office blocks on the ‘water affront’ and there is no doubting it – Jersey real CO2 emissions record is nothing like the official figures.
Isn’t it about time our planning system required developers to publish the embedded energy and equivalent CO2 emission values of new buildings? At least then we would know the impact of such developments, and could take an informed view of the impact on our CO2 reduction targets. Isn’t that the sort of joined up thinking between the planning and environment that our new ministerial government and the joining of those two departments under one minister were supposed to deliver?
There is a useful table of embedded energy values for building materials here:
The Defra report info is here:
SEI info:
http://www.sei.se/index.php?page=newsitem&item=5720![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
