Transportation emissions in the UK - Statistics & Facts
In 2023, the United Kingdom became the world’s first major economy to halve its emissions relative to 1990 levels. However, emissions from the country’s transportation sector have seen little change in recent decades. In the mid-2010s, transportation replaced electricity supply as the UK’s single largest climate polluter, with mobility on land, sea, and in the air now accounting for roughly 30 percent of total emissions. The UK now faces the challenge of decarbonizing this highly polluting sector to meet its climate ambitions.
While slow progress is being made, green policy U-turns, such as delaying the ban on internal combustion engine cars by five years to 2035, have called into question whether the current situation will dramatically change anytime soon.
How have UK transportation emissions changed?
UK domestic transportation sector emissions increased by 1.6 percent in 2022, to 113 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MtCO₂e). While this represents an overall decline of 12 percent compared with 1990 levels, a big contributor to these reductions was the outbreak of COVID-19, which caused emissions to plummet almost 20 percent in 2020. When looking at the pre-pandemic period of 1990 to 2019, annual UK transportation emissions decreased by just three percent. In contrast, emissions from the electricity supply and industry sectors declined by roughly 70 and 60 percent during this same period, respectively.Road transportation is the UK’s biggest carbon polluter
Emissions from UK road vehicles increased by roughly one percent in 2022, to approximately 101 MtCO₂e. This not only accounted for around 90 percent of domestic transportation-related emissions but also a quarter of total UK GHG emissions. Passenger cars alone were responsible for around 60 MtCO₂e in 2022, or 60 percent of transportation emissions that year. Despite improvements in vehicle efficiency, road vehicle emissions have seen little variation over the past three decades, owing to factors like increasing traffic volumes and rising sales of highly polluting vehicles like sports utility vehicles (SUVs).Decarbonizing transportation
The UK government has outlined several strategies to reduce transportation sector emissions. One such policy is the zero-emission vehicle mandate, which requires 80 percent of new cars and 70 percent of new vans sold in Great Britain to be zero-emission by 2030. The uptake of electric vehicles is already increasing in the UK, with BEVs accounting for some 16 percent of new car registrations in 2022. The number of public charging points is also growing, though the pace of installations needs to increase rapidly to achieve the target of 300,000 by 2030. Promoting behavioral changes is also on the agenda, including reducing car travel and switching to walking and cycling, as well as encouraging the use of buses and trains, which have far lower carbon footprints than private mobility.While slow progress is being made, green policy U-turns, such as delaying the ban on internal combustion engine cars by five years to 2035, have called into question whether the current situation will dramatically change anytime soon.
