UK Carbon Emissions Statistics

Key Takeaways:

• UK territorial greenhouse gas emissions were provisionally 367 MtCO2e in 2025, down 1.8% on 2024 and 54% below 1990 (DESNZ, 2 April 2026).
• Domestic transport is the largest emitting sector at 31% of the 2025 total, and it was the only major sector whose emissions rose that year, by 2%.
• Three official measures produce three different totals. For 2023 the territorial figure was 384 MtCO2e, residence 480 MtCO2e and the consumption footprint 699 MtCO2e (ONS).
• Emissions embedded in imports now make up 53% of the UK carbon footprint, against 31% in 1996. China alone accounts for 13% of the total (Defra).
• The 2026 DESNZ conversion factor for UK grid electricity fell 26%, so most SECR reporters will show a lower Scope 2 figure in 2026 without changing a single kilowatt hour of consumption.
• Parliament legislated the Seventh Carbon Budget on 24 June 2026 at 535 MtCO2e for 2038 to 2042 (SI 2026/695), but the current delivery plan still reaches only a 65% cut by 2030 against a 68% target.

This page pulls the current carbon emissions statistics for the UK together from their primary sources: DESNZ territorial estimates, ONS residence-basis accounts and the Defra consumption footprint. It covers sectors, gases, nations, regions, industries and targets, then sets out the specific numbers that matter if you report under SECR or hold allowances under the UK Emissions Trading Scheme.

The Headline Numbers

Final figures lag provisional ones by roughly a year. DESNZ published final 2024 estimates on 5 February 2026 and provisional 2025 estimates on 2 April 2026. Final 2025 figures are due in February 2027.

The table below uses the Climate Change Committee’s consolidated series, which is the cleanest single place to see the long run. Figures exclude international aviation and shipping.

Source: Climate Change Committee, Progress in reducing emissions: 2026 report to Parliament, Table 1.1, drawing on DESNZ final and provisional statistics.

One inconsistency is worth explaining rather than glossing over. The CCC series puts 1990 at 793 MtCO2e, while DESNZ’s own 1990 to 2024 inventory shows 790.8 MtCO2e for the same year. The gap comes from geographic coverage: the inventory submitted to the UNFCCC includes Crown Dependencies and certain Overseas Territories, which account for around 1% of the reported total, and the DESNZ headline statistics exclude them. Both are correct. They answer slightly different questions, so do not mix them inside one calculation.

The 1990 baseline itself is not fixed. In the 2026 release, DESNZ revised the 1990 total down by 19.9 MtCO2e, almost all of it from a single methodology change: landfill emissions are now modelled using GDP as a proxy for waste volumes before 1997, which cut the 1990 landfill estimate by 17 MtCO2e. Anyone tracking a percentage reduction against 1990 is tracking a moving denominator.

DESNZ puts the uncertainty around the 2024 total at 2.6%, based on a 95% confidence interval running from 2.5% below to 2.8% above. The uncertainty on the 1990 to 2024 trend is wider in absolute terms but still tight: the reduction is somewhere between 50% and 55%.

Emissions by Sector

DESNZ splits territorial emissions into eight sectors. The 2025 shares were domestic transport 31%, buildings and product uses 22%, agriculture 13%, industry 11%, electricity supply 10%, fuel supply 7%, waste 6% and land use, land use change and forestry 0.1%.

Electricity supply used to dominate this list. It was the largest emitting sector for most of the period since 1990 and is now fifth, down 82% over the series. Domestic transport overtook it in 2015 and has stayed there. In 2024, agriculture emissions exceeded industry emissions for the first time on record.

The 2025 movements were uneven.

Source: DESNZ, 2025 UK greenhouse gas emissions provisional figures, Table A. Estimates for agriculture, waste and LULUCF in 2025 are largely derived from projections rather than measured activity data.

Two details in that table repay attention. The industry fall of 5.4 MtCO2e is mostly one site: the CCC attributes almost two thirds of the industrial reduction between 2023 and 2025 to the closure of the blast furnaces at Port Talbot ahead of electrification. And electricity supply barely moved despite coal emissions reaching zero, because unabated gas generation rose 4.1 TWh as nuclear output fell 12% and net interconnector imports dropped 11%.

LULUCF is the odd one out. Net emissions from land use, land use change and forestry were 0.3 MtCO2e in 2024, which makes it a marginal net source rather than the sink most people assume. It has been a net source in almost every year since 1990, though net emissions have fallen 10.0 MtCO2e over that period, mostly through peatland rewetting. Peatland is the largest source within the sector, forestry the dominant sink. The CCC notes the forestry sink has been shrinking as woodland ages. At local level it flips: LULUCF was a net sink in 190 of the 361 local authority areas in 2024.

Road transport is roughly 90% of the domestic transport sector. Car kilometres have almost returned to 2019 levels, yet car emissions in 2025 were 12% below 2019, and the CCC estimates around half of that reduction comes from electric vehicle uptake.

Which Gases, and in What Proportion

Emissions are reported as seven gases weighted by global warming potential. The reduction rates differ between them, and not in the direction most people assume.

Source: DESNZ, Final UK greenhouse gas emissions statistics: 1990 to 2024, Table 1.1.

Carbon dioxide has the smallest proportional fall of the four, yet dominates the absolute reduction at 307 MtCO2e, because it started so much larger. Most of that came from taking coal out of power stations.

Three Official Measures, Three Different Answers

This is where most reporting on UK emissions goes wrong. There are three official measures, they are all published by government, and they disagree by a factor of nearly two.

Source: ONS, Measuring UK greenhouse gas emissions, updated 7 July 2026. 2023 is the most recent year for which all three are available.

The footprint measure is the one that changes the story. The UK carbon footprint peaked at 984 MtCO2e in 2007 and was 699 MtCO2e in 2023, a fall of 29% from peak. Since 1996 it has fallen 15%. Over the same period territorial emissions fell 50% and residence emissions 42%.

So the further out you draw the boundary, the slower the decline looks.

The composition explains why. Emissions from UK-produced goods and services consumed domestically fell 49% between 1996 and 2023. Emissions embedded in imports rose 43% over the same period and now account for 53% of the footprint, up from 31% in 1996. Imports from China were 93 MtCO2e in 2023, more than four times the 1996 level, and represent 13% of the entire UK carbon footprint. EU imports contributed 72 MtCO2e, or 10% of the total. Imports from Russia fell 48% in a single year following the invasion of Ukraine.

Whether that pattern represents offshoring or genuine decarbonisation is contested, and the statistics themselves do not settle it. Defra notes two candidate explanations for the falling footprint: products consumed in the UK are being produced with fewer emissions, or UK residents are buying less, or buying less carbon-intensive goods. Defra also flags that emissions embedded in overseas production carry greater uncertainty than territorial estimates, with a relative standard error historically in the range of 3.3% to 5.5% for consumption-based CO2.

One further caveat sits in the small print. The footprint statistics exclude emissions from land use, land use change and forestry both in the UK and abroad, which means deforestation embedded in imported crop, cattle and timber commodities is not in the 699 MtCO2e figure. The JNCC publishes separate estimates that partly fill that gap.

Per Person and Per Pound

Average UK emissions were 5.1 tCO2e per person in 2024 on the local authority dataset, which excludes aviation, shipping, military transport and fluorinated gases. On a consumption basis the figure is roughly double: 10 tCO2e per person in 2023, down 5% in a year and 37% from the 2004 peak of 16 tCO2e.

Carbon intensity of the economy has fallen faster than emissions themselves. ONS puts UK emissions intensity at 140 tonnes of CO2e per £1 million of gross value added in 2024, against 500 tonnes in 1990, a fall of 72%. There was no change between 2023 and 2024.

The two per-capita figures answer different questions: 5.1 tonnes is what the UK produces per resident, 10 tonnes is what each resident consumes.

The UK Share of Global Emissions

UK territorial emissions account for less than 1% of the global total. DESNZ states this directly, citing estimates from the UN, the International Energy Agency and the World Resources Institute.

That figure is often used to argue that UK action is marginal. The CCC offers the counterweight in the same breath: over a quarter of global emissions come from countries whose individual share is below 1%.

History gives a different ranking. Our World in Data, using Global Carbon Project figures, puts UK cumulative CO2 emissions at 80.1 billion tonnes as of 2024, or 4.33% of the global total since 1751. Until 1882, more than half of all cumulative global emissions had come from the UK alone. The UK was the first industrialised nation and the first fossil fuel emitter, and in 1751 its emissions, which were also the world total, were under 10 million tonnes.

For context on the current picture, China emitted around 13,000 MtCO2e in 2021, the United States around 5,500 MtCO2e in 2022 and the European Union around 2,900 MtCO2e in 2023, on the most recent submissions available to DESNZ for each.

Emissions by Industry

DESNZ publishes a separate breakdown by Standard Industrial Classification each June. The 2024 edition, published 25 June 2026, covers 20 industry sections and 129 industry groups, plus two categories that sit outside SIC: consumer expenditure, and land use.

Manufacturing was the largest emitting industry in 2024 at 55 MtCO2e, or 15% of the UK total. Agriculture, forestry and fishing followed at 47 MtCO2e (13%), then electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply at 44 MtCO2e (12%). That third entry had been the highest emitting industry in most years between 1990 and 2022.

Consumer expenditure, covering households and private travel, contributed 113 MtCO2e in 2024, which is 30% of national emissions.

Half of that, 56 MtCO2e, was private travel.

Long-run industry trends are more revealing than the annual ones. Fifteen of the twenty SIC sections have fallen since 1990 and five have grown.

Source: DESNZ, Annex 2: 2024 UK greenhouse gas final emissions by Standard Industrial Classification. Real estate shows the largest proportional rise but the smallest absolute one, so read both columns together.

Within manufacturing, petrochemicals fell 92% and basic iron and steel 75%. Only nine of the twenty sections saw emissions fall between 2023 and 2024, and eleven rose. The national total still fell 3%, because the reductions were concentrated in the two largest emitters.

Nations, Regions and Local Authorities

DESNZ assigns emissions to all 361 UK local authority areas. Between 2005 and 2024, the total allocated to local authorities fell 46%, from 656 MtCO2e to 351 MtCO2e, and every one of the 361 areas saw a decrease.

The national picture since 2005: England down 46%, Wales down 46%, Scotland down 42%, Northern Ireland down 27%. Among English regions the North East fell furthest at 69%, largely through industrial closures. London fell least per head, at 4.4 tCO2e per person.

Per capita results at local authority level look strange until you understand what drives them. The highest in 2024 was the City of London at 36 tCO2e per person, an artefact of enormous commercial activity against a tiny resident population. Second was Na h-Eileanan Siar at 33 tCO2e, driven by peatland emissions across a large area with few residents. The lowest were the London boroughs of Harrow, Waltham Forest and Redbridge, all at 2 tCO2e.

Individual sites move whole authorities. Stockton-on-Tees fell 38% in 2024 on the closure of an ammonia plant. Neath Port Talbot fell 33% on the blast furnace closures. Argyll and Bute went the other way and rose 29%, because the net emissions sink from its forestry shrank.

Three exclusions matter before anyone uses this dataset for a target. Aviation, shipping and military transport are absent, because there is no defensible basis for allocating them to a local area. Fluorinated gases are missing too, for lack of local data. They were 2% of the UK total in 2024. Some electricity and landfill emissions cannot be allocated at all and sit in an unallocated category.

Targets, Carbon Budgets and the Delivery Gap

The Climate Change Act 2008 sets a legally binding target of net zero by 2050 and requires five-year carbon budgets to be set twelve years in advance. Compliance is assessed against the Net UK Carbon Account rather than raw emissions, though adjustments for emissions trading have not applied since the UK left the EU ETS in 2020.

Seven budgets have now been set. The first three are closed and all were met, each with a wider margin than the last.

Sources: DESNZ, Final UK greenhouse gas emissions statistics: 1990 to 2024; Carbon Budget Order 2026 (SI 2026/695); CCC, Progress in reducing emissions: 2026, Table 2.1.

Two pieces of secondary legislation changed the framework in June 2026 and both are now in force. The Carbon Budget Order 2026 set CB7 at the level the CCC had advised, roughly an 87% cut on 1990. Alongside it, the Climate Change Act 2008 (International Aviation and International Shipping) Regulations 2026 formally brought the UK share of international aviation and shipping into carbon budgets from the Sixth onwards.

On the Fourth Carbon Budget, 1,124 MtCO2e of the 1,950 had been used by the end of 2025, leaving an average of 413 MtCO2e a year for the remaining two. Provisional 2025 emissions were 11% below that.

Carbon budgets are on track. The Nationally Determined Contribution is not.

The UK’s 2030 NDC commits to a reduction of at least 68% against the 1990 baseline, which means getting emissions to 291 MtCO2e. The government’s Carbon Budget and Growth Delivery Plan, published October 2025, reaches 65%. That is a shortfall of 26 MtCO2e, and the CBGDP pathway reaches the 2030 target two years late, in 2032.

CCC analysis splits the required reductions by confidence level, and the result is the most useful single diagnostic available on UK climate policy:

• 44% covered by credible plans, mostly renewable generation and EV rollout.
• 15% covered by plans with some risks, including HGV decarbonisation and peatland restoration.
• 19% carrying significant risks, including domestic low-carbon heating beyond existing grants and Scunthorpe steel decarbonisation.
• 4% covered by insufficient plans, including public and commercial building heat and much of industrial electrification.
• 17% not covered by CBGDP policies at all.

Pace is the underlying constraint. Annual reductions have averaged 17.1 MtCO2e since 2008 but only 13.9 MtCO2e over the last four years. Meeting the 2030 NDC requires 22.5 MtCO2e a year from here, a 62% increase on the recent rate. The CBGDP pathway delivers a 24% increase.

The Sixth Carbon Budget is the tightest of the seven against its plan, at a margin of 2 MtCO2e. Around 17% of the reductions in that period come from engineered removals, which the CCC flags as the largest single delivery risk in the plan.

The Indicators Behind the Trend

Electricity supply has done most of the work so far, accounting for almost half of the emissions reduction since 2008. The end-use sectors are the constraint now.

Source: CCC, Progress in reducing emissions: 2026 report to Parliament, Chapter 3; DESNZ provisional 2025 statistics.

Fewer than 2% of UK homes are heated by a heat pump, against a Warm Homes Plan target of 450,000 installations a year by 2030, of which around 250,000 would be retrofits. That gap is the clearest single reason buildings emissions are not falling faster.

What These Statistics Mean for Company Reporting

DESNZ states in the final statistics release that the same data underpins the emission conversion factors organisations use to report their own emissions. So a methodology revision to the national inventory lands in your Scope 1 and 2 figures the following June, whether or not anything changed at your sites.

The 2026 Conversion Factors

DESNZ published the 2026 UK government greenhouse gas conversion factors on 11 June 2026. The UK grid electricity factor fell 26% against the 2025 edition, and DESNZ has broken down why in its major changes report:

• 16 percentage points from changes in the grid mix between 2023 and 2024.
• 3 percentage points from incorporating an additional year of data, covering 2024 to 2025.
• 6 to 7 percentage points from methodology changes, including improved treatment of electricity imports and exports and a correction to a double-counting issue affecting autogenerators.

The methodology change is the one to flag in your disclosure. DESNZ reduced the data lag from two years to one, so the 2026 factor reflects two years of grid change in a single step. Related factors moved further: transmission and distribution losses fell 30%, well-to-tank electricity 20%, London Underground travel 44 to 45%, and the homeworking office equipment factor 31%, the last because it had not been updated since 2022.

A company that changed nothing operationally will report a materially lower Scope 2 figure in 2026. Under the GHG Protocol consistency principle, that is a methodology change requiring explicit disclosure, and where it is material, base year recalculation should be considered. Note also that this affects location-based Scope 2 only. Market-based reporting using REGOs or supplier-specific factors does not move with the grid average.

So the direction of travel in the factors is real, and the size of this year’s step is partly bookkeeping.

SECR: Bigger and Leakier Than Assumed

DESNZ published its statutory post-implementation review of SECR on 26 May 2026, alongside an independent evaluation by ICF Consulting Services and IFF Research. It contains two findings that change what can accurately be said about the regime.

First, scope. The review records 19,900 companies and LLPs in scope, 76% more than the 11,300 forecast in the 2018 impact assessment. The widely repeated figure of roughly 12,000 is the old forecast, not a measurement.

Second, compliance. The review triangulates three sources that pull in different directions. Machine-read filings found 34% of eligible entities with no carbon emissions detected, which the review treats as an overestimate because image-based PDFs cannot be read. The FRC’s 2024 reviews found 10% with minor non-compliance but are deliberately skewed to listed firms. The business survey put self-reported non-compliance at 14% to 23%. On balance the review concludes actual non-compliance is likely to be 14% to 23%, concentrated among private companies and LLPs, and describes enforcement as light-touch, with no SECR-specific penalty regime and no dedicated regulator.

On cost, the review found compliance takes an average of 94 hours of internal staff time a year, around £2,500 in internal labour, rising to a mean total of £7,100 once external costs are included. That varies sharply by size: £12,200 a year for organisations with 1,000 or more employees against £4,700 for those under 300, and £8,700 for quoted companies against £6,600 for unquoted. Across the population, ongoing compliance now costs £140 million a year against the £31 million predicted at design.

The verdict was still positive. The review assessed the benefit-cost ratio at 2.72 and net present social value at £5.1 billion over 2019 to 2025, against a 1.6 ratio predicted at design, and the result holds under sensitivity testing. Its recommendation is to retain SECR with amendments, with options to be explored through a planned 2026 consultation on streamlining energy and emissions reporting.

Thresholds themselves have not moved. Two of three tests apply: turnover of £36 million or more, balance sheet total of £18 million or more, or 250 or more employees. The April 2025 uplift to Companies Act size thresholds did not change them, which is a live trap for companies that reclassified as medium-sized for accounts purposes and concluded they had left SECR scope.

UK ETS and What Comes Next

The UK Emissions Trading Scheme applies to energy intensive industries, power generation, aviation and, since 1 July 2026, domestic maritime activity. Cargo and passenger ships of 5,000 gross tonnage and above must now surrender allowances for voyages between UK ports and while docked. Offshore vessels follow from 1 January 2027.

On the market side, the auction reserve price rose from £22 to £28 on 8 April 2026 under the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme Auctioning (Amendment) Regulations 2026, and from 1 January 2027 it adjusts annually in line with the ONS GDP deflator. Just under 53 million allowances are being auctioned across 25 auctions in 2026. Auctions in 2025 raised around £2.4 billion.

Three further changes are scheduled rather than live. Energy from waste joins in 2028, after a two-year monitoring period that began on 1 January 2026 without financial liability. Engineered greenhouse gas removals integrate from 2029. The UK Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism applies from 2027, covering aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen, and iron and steel, and direct process emissions only until 2029 at the earliest.

On UK Sustainability Reporting Standards, the position is still proposed. The Department for Business and Trade published the finalised UK SRS on 25 February 2026 and any UK entity may adopt them voluntarily, though voluntary adopters do not get the transitional reliefs available to mandatory reporters. FCA consultation CP26/5 would replace the TCFD-aligned listing rules with UK SRS S2 climate disclosures for accounting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2027, phasing in Scope 3 and the broader S1 topics on comply-or-explain. The Policy Statement is due in autumn 2026. Until it lands, none of this is settled.

When the Next Figures Land

Each of these datasets has a fixed annual slot, which makes it straightforward to plan around.

Sources: DESNZ future updates sections in the 2025 provisional, 2024 final, SIC annex and local authority releases; Defra UK carbon footprint publication page; DESNZ written statement of 2 June 2026 on setting the Seventh Carbon Budget.

One practical note on the conversion factors. Use the factor set matching the year in which the activity occurred, not whichever edition happens to be newest when you write the report.

More Information

• DESNZ, Final UK greenhouse gas emissions statistics: 1990 to 2024, published 5 February 2026 and updated 25 June 2026.
• DESNZ, Provisional UK greenhouse gas emissions statistics 2025, published 2 April 2026.
• Defra, UK and England’s carbon footprint to 2023, updated 24 July 2026.
• Climate Change Committee, Progress in reducing emissions: 2026 report to Parliament, 24 June 2026.

FAQs

What Are the UK’s Current Carbon Emissions?

UK territorial greenhouse gas emissions were provisionally 367 MtCO2e in 2025, according to DESNZ estimates published on 2 April 2026. That is 1.8% below 2024 and 54% below 1990. Final 2024 figures were 373 MtCO2e. Provisional estimates are revised when final figures appear, and in recent years the difference has been up to 2%, so treat the provisional number as a trend indicator rather than a precise total.

What Percentage of Global Emissions Does the UK Produce?

Less than 1% of the current global total, on DESNZ’s assessment drawing on UN, IEA and World Resources Institute estimates. Historically the share is much larger. Our World in Data puts UK cumulative CO2 emissions since 1751 at 4.33% of the global total, and until 1882 the UK alone accounted for more than half of all cumulative emissions to that date.

Which UK Sector Emits the Most?

Domestic transport, at 31% of territorial emissions in 2025. It overtook electricity supply in 2015 and has held the position since. Road vehicles are around 90% of the sector, and around half of domestic transport emissions come from households rather than businesses. It was also the only major sector to increase in 2025, rising 2% on higher petrol and diesel use.

Has the UK Met Its Carbon Budgets?

The first three were met, by 1%, 14% and 15% respectively. The Fourth Carbon Budget runs to 2027 and the CCC assesses achievement as highly likely, with 2025 emissions already 11% below the average needed across the remaining years. Parliament legislated the Seventh Carbon Budget in June 2026 at 535 MtCO2e for 2038 to 2042. The 2030 Nationally Determined Contribution is a different matter: the government’s own delivery plan reaches 65% against a 68% target.

Which Emissions Figure Should My Company Use for Reporting?

None of the national totals directly. National statistics set the context and supply the emission factors, but a corporate inventory is built from your own activity data multiplied by the DESNZ conversion factors for the year in question. For SECR you report Scope 1 and 2 as a minimum, with quoted companies also disclosing global energy use and the UK proportion. If you need certainty about your specific obligations, check with your auditor or a qualified adviser, as scope depends on your legal form and size tests.