Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 2 March 2020 to Question 19056 on Aviation, what estimate he has made of the CO2 emissions generated by the accumulated air miles in each of the last five years; and what steps his Department is taking to offset those emissions.
Based on the miles that were flown as given in my answer to PQ 19056, Defra has emitted the following amounts of carbon dioxide (CO 2).
Year | Mileage | Tonnes of CO2 |
2015 | 1,523,505 | 302 |
2016 | 1,239,659 | 224 |
2017 | 1,892,968 | 307 |
2018 | 3,312,017 | 579 |
2019 | 3,329,349 | 540 |
2020 | 160,695 | 26 |
Since 2009-10 the department has reduced its CO2 emissions by 49% in 2019-20. Rather than offsetting our emissions, we have done this through investing in energy efficiency measures across our estate, reducing the amount of travel we do and changing the way we travel to lower CO2 emitting forms of transport, shrinking our estate and we have benefitted from the UK grid becoming greener. All of these measures have contributed to our fall in CO2 emissions.