Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what proportion of particulate emissions is generated by domestic coal burning.

Details on emissions of particulate matter (PM) by fuel type are not available for the latest year’s emissions inventory (first published 14 February 2020). This information will be available later in the spring via the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory website. Levels and trends in annual emissions of particulate matter in the UK are available from the National Statistics on emissions of air pollutants. These can be found at the following URL:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/emissions-of-air-pollutants

Data from the previous year’s inventory (published in 2019) indicate that approximately 3% of all PM_2.5 emissions and 2% of all PM₁₀ emissions in the UK were attributed to the domestic burning of coal in 2017. This equates to 3.3 kilotons and 3.4 kilotons of PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ emitted from domestic coal combustion in 2017, respectively. These figures include the burning of anthracite which is coal with a high carbon content.