A moving target
Posted 18 March, 2008 in Carbon offsetting, Carbon trading, Political issues
So is the UK making cuts in its greenhouse gas emissions or not? Well, that depends on which set of statistics you use. First, there are the stats that the Government presents to the UNFCCC, which appear to show that we’re doing rather nicely, thank you very much. Then again, there’s the more comprehensive set of figures – the Environmental Accounts – that the Office for National Statistics prepares. Crucially, the Environmental Accounts include emissions associated with international aviation and shipping.
A report published by the UK’s National Audit Office shows that the way GHGs and CO2 in particular are accounted creates a confusing, often contradictory picture.
The diversity of targets certainly doesn’t help. The UK is variously committed to:
a UK Kyoto target – 12.5 percent reduction of 1990/95 GHG emissions by 2008-2012;
an EU target – 20 percent reduction in GHGs, or 30 percent if everyone else agrees, by 2020;
three domestic goals against a 1990 baseline, of 20 percent reduction in CO2 by 2010, a 60 percent reduction by 2050, with “real progress” by 2020; and
a proposed new framework as defined in the Climate Change Bill, setting the 2020 and 2050 goals in statute and for developing five-year carbon budgets to set in place a formal emissions reduction pathway.
Confusing, isn’t it? The question of where GHG emissions should be measured is also a bit of a wriggler. Economic changes in the UK have meant that, when measured at manufacture, emissions have fallen because of an increased dependence on the import of carbon-intensive goods. If however, emissions were to be measured at the point of consumption, we haven’t just failed to reduce them. We’ve increased them. It seems that all that’s happened is we’ve shifted from manufacturing our own goods to importing them from elsewhere.
The problem is that measuring emissions at the point of manufacture is much easier to do than at the point of consumption. As the report says, it “involves complex assumptions and much uncertainty.” As it is, national GHG emissions are only estimated from a model based on fossil fuel use and any “other relevant industrial or agricultural processes”… you know, like cow farts.
[Talking of which, the report has its own inconsistencies. For example, it is claimed that the degree of uncertainty over CO2 emissions fairly small (around 2 percent either side of the mean). On the other hand, the best estimate for total non-CO2 GHG emissions is the equivalent to 100 million tonnes of CO2, but the real value could lie anywhere between 70 and 208! Given that's the case, how is it possible to assert, with any degree of confidence, that “non-CO2 GHG emissions fell significantly during the 1990s and the effect of this on total GHG reductions will continue to be very significant”?]
And then there’s the inclusion, or exclusion, of foreign credits. Spot the difference in the two figures below (you have to look very carefully, now):
See it? The top figure, published in the March 2007 budget report, suggests that emissions have fallen steeply in the last year. But the “same” data, published by Defra at the same time, say nothing of the sort. Why? Because the Treasury figures include the impact of foreign emissions credits, whereas Defra’s don’t. It’s like rabbits from hats, isn’t it? What’s more, Defra get their figures from National Statistics, which have strict criteria for the integrity and quality of its data. And the ONS doesn’t think the foreign emissions data meet those criteria. Oh dear.
And then there’s the final rub. There’s no international agreement on how to allocate emissions from international aviation and shipping, so what do we do? Just take them out! Yet, strangely, the strict-criteria-bound ONS manages to leave them in, making use of reasonably accurate flight kilometre data for planes and bunker fuel consumption for boats. This leaving in, taking out policy accounted for more than 50 percent of the difference between the two sets of figures reported for 2005, 733 million tonnes of CO2 according to the Environmental Accounts, just 655 million tonnes according to the IPCC-friendly, Kyoto-based measure.
That means that according to the Kyoto criteria, we’re nicely on course to meet the reduction target. According to the ONS, on the other hand, there has been no reduction at all, and in recent years emissions have risen steadily. What’s more, these figures likely underestimate the situation, because they don’t include indirect GHGs such as carbon monoxide, nor do they take into account the additional impact that aeroplane emissions have relative to ground-based emissions.
Finally, the report shows that as things stand we can only meet specified targets through an increased dependence on purchasing foreign carbon credits. That surely isn’t the kind of progress that’s really needed. If we need to reduce carbon emissions, we need to reduce them, not just shift them somewhere else. Or worse still, bury them under a pile of flaky statistics.
