Carbon Accounting in the UK: An overview of progress and issues

1. Carbon Accounting in the UK: An overview of progress and issues Brendan Freeman, Office for National Statistics (UK) 22nd Meeting of the London Group on Environmental Accounting Oslo, 28-30 September

2. Aims of the project • Test the feasibility of producing SEEA-EEA style Carbon Accounts • Assess current data sources • Test compatibility of classification systems • Produce provisional and partial estimates of stocks and flows of carbon within UK • Layout path forward for development of the accounts

3. Carbon accounting in SEEA • SEEA-EEA identifies carbon as one of four cross-cutting themes that frame our view of ecosystems. • Taking a thematic approach : • Enables carbon to be accounted for in its own right • Supports measurement of ecosystem condition/flows • Accounting for carbon stocks complements measurement within the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) framework

4. SEEA-EEA: High level carbon account

5. Carbon Cycle: Scope of UK carbon accounts • Stocks and flows of the carbon cycle give the underlying context for carbon accounting • UK Coverage • IN – Geosphere, Biosphere • Out – Oceans, Atmosphere, Accumulations in the Economy

6. Geocarbon • Stock and flow estimates for the geocarbon categories of coal, oil and gas were presented in the accounts. • Limestone and carbonate rocks excluded from study at this stage. • The broadest measure available for the selected geocarbon resources was adopted, while still attempting to align as closely as is possible to SEEA concepts.

7. Breakdown of geocarbon deposit types

8. Issue 1. • How to define the boundary of geocarbon stores for the purposes of ecosystem accounting? • Where stocks are considerable but large quantities are unlikely to be released by anthropogenic or natural activity within a reasonable time frame, it is questionable whether there is any point in recording the relevant amounts in the accounts.

9. Biocarbon • Primary focus of the UK carbon accounts is on terrestrial habitats/ ecosystems. • Can be broadly classified into: • organic soil carbon, • vegetation (biomass) carbon • carbon contained in animals living within the ecosystems; and • inorganic carbon contained in soils

10. Carbon accounts link to UK ecosystem accounts • Support estimates of: • extent (MtC), • condition (carbon content per Km2) • service flows (wood, carbon sequestration).

11. Combining classifications • Stock estimates based on UK field survey data. • Flows are generally taken from the Land Use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) section if the Greenhouse Gas Emissions. • This has a classification which accords to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reporting guidelines.

12. Issue 2 • Ensuring no loss of coverage when aligning SEEA habitat classes to IPCC land use classes • Guidance on mapping between IPCC LULUCF Classifications and SEEA-EEA habitat classifications is limited. • The LULUCF classification does not include marine ecosystems including those intertidal areas recorded within the Coastal Margins Land Cover category.

13. Issue 3. • Identifying and isolating carbon flows within the LULUCF class of GHG emissions • Considerable difficulty in correctly identifying and isolating flows from natural processes, with the LULUCF source category: Other, harvested wood products being one example. • Reported on a net (emissions to, less removals from, the atmosphere) basis and are calculated based on estimated annual stock changes.

14. Issue 3. cont… • LULUCF does not distinguish between soil and biomass carbon, so estimates of changes in flows need to be combined together.

15. Thank you! Questions, comments and suggestions welcomed…