Carbon Emissions

(asked on 8th June 2020) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Government's target of the UK achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of including the carbon emissions of imported products in the calculation of the UK's carbon emissions.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 15th June 2020

Defra produces annual estimates of the UK’s carbon footprint. The latest data was published on 4 May 2020: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uks-carbon-footprint. These are consumption-based emissions and include the emissions embedded in imported products. However, consumption emissions are officially categorised as “experimental statistics” because of inherent uncertainties in the estimates produced. The UK’s greenhouse gas emissions statistics used for the purposes of measuring progress against the net zero target are calculated in line with the standard international accounting approach for measuring emissions as established by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Reticulating Splines