The Department for Environment, Food and Rural affairs has published data on the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions showing that our carbon footprint increased slightly between 2012 and 2013.
The data covers the period between 1997 and 2013, and gives a particularly extensive of the UK’s carbon footprint calculated in terms of total greenhouse gas emissions “that are associated with the consumption spending of UK residents of goods and services, wherever in the world these emissions arise along the supply chain, and those which re directly generated by UK households through private motoring, etc”.
Calculating emissions in this way is difficult – “emissions relating to overseas production of imports to the UK…are not as easily measured as emissions generate within the UK border.”
It is, however, important in terms of generating an accurate picture of the UK’s influence on climate change globally since, as the report explains, “the UK economy as continued to move from a manufacturing base towards the services sector. One of the consequences of this is that more of the goods we buy and use are now produced overseas.”
The data showed that the UK’s carbon footprint was at its largest in 2007, when a total of 1,296 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent were emitted. By 2013, this had fallen by 19%, but grew from 2012 to 2013 by 3%. The report also indicated that the UK’s carbon dioxide footprint (taking into account only CO2 emissions, while the carbon footprint covers all GHGs) grew by 2% over the same year.
The portion of emissions accounted for by imports was “slightly higher in 2013 (at 55%) than in 1997 (47%)” despite total emissions being lower. The report suggests that the increase during 2013 was largely down to a “higher level of embedded emissions in imports from China and the Rest of the World in 2013 compared to 1997, offsetting lower levels in emissions from imports of goods from the EU.”
Indeed, in 2013, total emissions related to UK consumption from imports from China were at 118 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent – lower than in 2007 but still 112% higher than in 1997.
