Health, education, etc emissions

Carbon dioxide is generated by the health service, schools, social services, the armed forces and so on.

This is taken to be 1.1 tonnes per person per year for the UK.

The source is the Carbon Trust report [1], Chart C.

The addition of four categories ('Health and veterinary services' , 'Education', 'Social work activities', and 'Public administration and defence') gives a total of 14.3 million tonnes of carbon, which is equivalent to 0.8 tonnes CO2 per person.

This is then scaled up to 1.1 tonnes per person because only the top 25 categories are shown in detail in Chart C, and the smaller categories come to another 22.3 MtC (by subtraction) out of the overall total of 99.8MtC. This then makes an allowance for public services outside the top 25 categories, such as the police.


References

[1]Carbon Trust (2006) The carbon emissions generated in all that we consume https://carbonindependent.org/files/ctc603.pdf

First published: 2008
Last updated: 15 Jul 2019