Climate Change and Air Quality Progress Report 2023 to 2024

The following sections show the progress made against the aims and objectives of the Climate Change and Air Quality Strategy.

Area greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are taken from the UK local authority and regional greenhouse gas emissions national statistics: 2005 to 2022 and have been calculated using a generation based approach. These were published by the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero on 27 June 2024 and the data is presented in the figure 1.

The overall trend from the beginning of the data set, in 2005, is for a steady reduction from an initial level of 4,795 kt CO2e in 2005 to 2991 kt CO2e in 2022. This is a total reduction of 1,804 kt CO2e, or 37.6% over the 18 year period (an average rate of 2.63% per annum).

The impact of the COVID pandemic and subsequent recovery is visible within the latest trends - all emissions reduced significantly in the year 2020 largely due to restrictions on people and organisations’ activities during pandemic (N.B. the first lockdown was announced by the Prime Minister on 23rd March 2020). As reported in the 2022/23 Progress Report, this was followed in 2021 by an increase in emissions of 6.5% (related largely to an easing of restrictions and colder temperatures increasing the use of heating in buildings). Emissions increased again in 2022, however 2021 and 2022 area greenhouse gas emissions are lower (7.73% and 6.7% respectively) than those in 2019. To further understand recent trends, figure 2 shows the contribution made by sources of emissions to the Buckinghamshire local authority (LA) area greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions total in 2022.

Transport is still the largest contributor of greenhouse gas (GUG) emissions in Buckinghamshire, followed by domestic sources.

The graph in Figure 3 presents annual total Buckinghamshire local authority area greenhouse gas emissions against population levels.

Emissions per capita has fallen – despite population growth since 2005 of roughly 0.85% on average per annum to over 80,000 residents emissions have decreased by over 1,500 kt CO2e. This is an average annual emissions reduction per capita of 3.44%, and ,despite emissions rising in 2022, emissions per capita remain the same in 2022 as in 2021 at 5.3 tCO2e.

From 2020 to 2022 some emissions categories have increased as society has returned to a “post-pandemic normal”. These include emissions from waste to landfill, which has increased from 121.8 kt CO2e in 2021 to 302.5 kt CO2e in 2022 and emissions from transport, which has increased from 1243 ktCO2e in 2021 to 1273 ktCO2e in 2022. Emissions from all other source categories have decreased.