UK's CO2 emissions higher than official figures, government says

The environment department Defra says UK emissions are higher than previously stated if carbon pollution linked to imported goods is included. Official figures only count direct emissions within national boundaries, so miss out the carbon cost of goods manufactured elsewhere.

Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from consumed goods and services in the UK emissions rose by 18%, or 115 million tonnes (Mt), over 1992-2004, according to a government report released yesterday. This contrasts with a 5% decline in national emissions over the same time, as reported to the UN as part of the country’s Kyoto Protocol commitments, says the report.

Prepared by the Stockholm Institute on Sustainable Development and the University of Sydney for the UK’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the report analyses the effect of CO2 emissions from imports and exports. Its findings suggest that governments may be understating their actual emissions due to the exclusion of imports and exports from national emissions inventories.

“Under international climate change agreements, we only have direct influence over our domestic emissions – and they are, and will remain, the basis for these commitments,” said UK Environment Secretary Hilary Benn. “But as we accelerate the move to a low-carbon economy, we must help business and individuals to understand and reduce the environmental impacts of the products and services they produce, sell or consume, wherever in the world they are made.”

Powerhouse economies, including Britain, are failing to make the drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions vital to combat climate change.

As the biggest polluters, they had to show leadership and set an example to the rest of the world with a commitment to cut the amount of CO2 they produce by at least 25-40 per cent by 2020.

The criticism comes in a joint report by conservation group WWF and financial services giant Allianz released before the G8 countries - Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK and US - meet next week in Japan with climate change high on the agenda.

Almost everyone seems to agree: governments now face a choice between saving the planet and saving the economy. As recession looms, the political pressure to abandon green policies intensifies. A report published yesterday by Ernst & Young suggests that the EU's puny carbon target will raise energy bills by 20% over the next 12 years. Last week the prime minister's advisers admitted to the Guardian that his renewable energy plans were "on the margins" of what people will tolerate.

But these fears are based on a false assumption: that there is a cheap alternative to a green economy. Last week New Scientist reported a survey of oil industry experts, which found that most of them believe global oil supplies will peak by 2010. If they are right, the game is up. A report published by the US department of energy in 2005 argued that unless the world begins a crash programme of replacements 10 or 20 years before oil peaks, a crisis "unlike any yet faced by modern industrial society" is unavoidable.

If the world is sliding into recession, it's partly because governments believed that they could choose between economy and ecology. The price of oil is so high and it hurts so much because there has been no serious effort to reduce our dependency. Yesterday in the Guardian, Rajendra Pachauri suggested that an impending recession could force us to confront the flaws in the global economy. Sadly it seems so far to have had the opposite effect: a recent Ipsos Mori poll suggests that people are losing interest in climate change. Opportunities for energy populism abound: it cannot be long before one of the major parties abandons the pale green consensus and starts invoking an oil cornucopia it cannot possibly deliver.