ImageTitleSource / methodology
Annual average usesTable 1: UK Per capita consumption of four high-emitting activities
Home space heating: ECUK (2021) Table U2, total domestic gas = 25.735Mtoe. 1MWh=0.086toe, or 1M m3=910 toe. (https://direns.mines-paristech.fr/Sites/Thopt/en/co/equivalences-energetiques.html) . UK population in 2020 was 67.22M. Per capita domestic gas therefore = 0.38toe = 420m3 per person per year. Emissions factor of 2.2kg CO2e/m3, leads to domestic gas emissions at 926kg CO2e/pers/year.
Domestic car fuel: DUKES (2021) Table 3.2 has total UK final consumption of 9.144 Mtonnes of petrol and 19.693Mt Diesel. DUKES table A.4 gives density of petrol as 1,348 litres per tonne, and density of Diesel at 1,184 litres per tonne. According to racfoundation (https://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/environment#a8) 37.6% of cars on UK roads in 2020 were diesel, so if diesel mpg equal to petrol mpg, assume that UK final consumption of diesel in private cars is (37.6/(100-37.6))*9.144=5.51MtDiesel. With 31.7 million cars on the UK roads (18.7M petrol, 11.9 Diesel) (also RAC), consumption Is 490kg=660l petrol/car or 550l diesel/car. Emissions data (https://ecoscore.be/en/info/ecoscore/co2) gives emissions of 2.40 kg CO2e/litre petrol, 2.64 kg CO2e/litre diesel, so 1600 kg CO2/petrol car or 1450 kg CO2/diesel car
Air travel: total no. departures from UK (2019 – pre covid) 150M passengers (half of total given in AVI0101 from https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/aviation-statistics-data-tables-avi#air-traffic-at-uk-airports-avi01). Total UK aviation emissions (departures only) = 115 Mt CO2e/yr – from my spreadsheet analysis for figure 2. Divide by population gives 1.71 Mt CO2e/yr per person. Divide by 195g CO2e per km flight per person (BEIS/DEFRA GHG conversion factors, long-haul average at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/greenhouse-gas-reporting-conversion-factors-2019). Average speed is ~550mph=885km/h (various google sources) so emissions are 170kg/person/hour flight. Therefore total average is 10 hours/person
Ruminants: UK beef consumption is 311 Mt/yr – I think this is the weight of the animals (https://www.nationalbeefassociation.com/resources/beef-statistics/) but according to (https://www.statista.com/topics/7544/uk-beef-market/) beef meat production in UK (2019) is 914,000t/yr and sheep is 308,000t/yr (confirmed at https://britishmeatindustry.org/industry/imports-exports/sheepmeat/). consumption of all meat estimated at 800g/pers/week = 42kg/pers/yr. of which (from the above) beef is around 14 kg/pers/yr and sheepmeat is 5kg/pers/yr. Emissions factors from Scarborough et al (2014) – as used in Absolute Zero – 69 kgCO2e/kg beef, 64kgCO2/kg sheep meat giving 900 kg CO2e/beef/pers/yr and 320 kg CO2e/sheepmeat/pers/yr
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