e-Digest Statistics about: Climate Change
Emissions of carbon dioxide for local authority areas
The files below provide details of carbon dioxide emissions for Local Authority (NUTS4) and Government Office Region (NUTS2) areas for the year 2006, published on 18th September 2008. Figures for 2005 have also been revised so that they are directly comparable to the new 2006 figures. These are included in the Excel workbook below. These estimates are now classified as full National Statistics having now met more rigorous data quality requirements since the previous version of the 2005 estimates was published as Experimental National Statistics in November 2007.
2006 Statistical Summary (PDF download 57Kb)
2006 Methodological Summary (PDF download 32Kb)
2006 Main Report (PDF download 1.5Mb)
2005 & 2006 data (Microsoft Excel workbook 1.02Mb)
The main report and data tables were produced on behalf of Defra by AEA.
The 2005 estimates published previously have now been superseded by the revised 2005 figures. The old 2005 estimates and the stand alone datasets for 2003 and 2004 published previously are not comparable with the new data owing to improvements in the source data and methodology used.
A number of separate documents have also been produced to accompany the main report, covering a number of areas in more detail. These are as follows:
Mapping small industrial emissions – a report which outlines the methodology used to map emissions from smaller industrial and commercial sources.
Point source fuel use estimates – a report which outlines the process used to derive estimates of fuel used by large consumers.
Mapping Carbon Emissions & Removals for the Land Use, Land Use Change & Forestry (LULUCF) Sector - a report prepared by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH) looking at LULUCF emissions and removals at the Local Authority level.
Future developments
It is intended that estimates will continue to be produced annually in future years. It is likely that the 2007 dataset, to be published in Autumn 2009, may include further methodological improvements increasing the level of accuracy in certain sectors. However, consistency will be maintained so that data from the 2005 estimates onwards are directly comparable and a time series is established. However, no revisions will be made in this way to either of the 2003 or 2004 datasets – the quality of data available for certain sectors means the methodology cannot be applied to these years.
Local Government Performance Framework
As part of the Comprehensive Spending Review 2007 announcement, the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG) published a single set of 198 national indicators that underpin the Local Government Performance Framework. This new indicator set includes a performance indicator on climate change mitigation which measures “Per capita reduction of CO2 emissions in the Local Authority area” (NI186). Details of this indicator can be found at this Defra page for Local Government Indicators and the data itself can be found here.
These data are a subset of the main LA CO2 dataset for use in monitoring this indicator. This subset excludes emissions in the main dataset which are considered to fall outside the scope of the indicator (e.g. emissions from motorways and emissions from some installations in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme). The indicator is based on per capita emissions, and uses population estimates published by the Office for National Statistics at the Local Authority level. As these statistics are a subset of the main dataset, revised figures for 2005 have again been published alongside the new 2006 figures.
As 2005 is the baseline year for NI186, and Local Authorities will have been using previously released statistics, the old 2005 figures (total emissions and per capita emissions) are included on the spreadsheet for information. However, as with the main dataset, these should now be treated as obsolete and it is only the revised 2005 figures that can be directly compared with the new 2006 statistics.
Feedback
We would welcome comments on these statistics. These, and any other enquiries, should be sent to: climatechange.statistics@defra.gsi.gov.uk
Page last modified: 19 January 2009
Page published: 20 November 2007