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Greenhouse gas statistics
13/04/2012
Scotland’s Chief Statistician today announces the release of a report on emissions and removals of greenhouse gases from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern, Ireland: 1990 – 2010.
The main findings are:
- Scotland is a net sink of greenhouse gases from LULUCF activities.
- The size of this sink has increased by 161 percent, from -2.092 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (Mt CO2e) to -5.459 Mt CO2e, between 1990 and 2010.
- Between 2009 and 2010 the size of the sink decreased by 2.05 percent. This followed a steady increase between 1990 and 2009. 0.114 Mt CO2e represents 0.2 percent of overall Scottish emissions in 2009.
- The small decline in the sink was in line with expectations and does not change previous advice in relation to meeting the 2010 target.
In 2010, for the LULUCF sector in Scotland:
- Net emissions/removals were dominated by the large Forest Land sink (-7.580 Mt CO2e) and Cropland source (5.321 Mt CO2e).
- There were 0.297 Mt CO2e of nitrous oxide emissions.
- Estimates of methane emissions are small, at 0.009 Mt CO2e.
The 1990-2010 figures in this Statistical News Release are from the National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory report “Emissions and removals of greenhouse gases from Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern, Ireland: 1990 – 2010”, produced by the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology for the UK Department for Energy and Climate Change, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Northern Ireland Department of Environment.
The LULUCF sector includes carbon stock changes, emissions of greenhouse gases (CO2, methane and nitrous oxide) by sources and removals of CO2 by sinks from land use, land use change and forestry activities. Removals of greenhouse gases are conventionally presented as negative quantities.
Greenhouse gas emissions and removals are reviewed every year, and the whole historical data series is revised to incorporate methodological improvements and new data. Changes to UK LULUCF emissions were first reported in February when UK level GHG emission statistics were published here.
There was internal restructuring of the Grassland, Cropland and Settlement categories in the 1990-2010 inventory. This has meant that there has been a change in the time series of emissions within sub-categories but overall emissions from each main land category have not changed. There are small differences in net emissions from the 2009 inventory due to the inclusion of new activity data. Further methodological information can be found in the report.
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