Aug 2, 2024
In this episode we explore how the ONS measures our natural environment and the green economy.
Relevant datasets: ONS Environmental Accounts
Transcript
MILES FLETCHER
Welcome again to Statistically Speaking, the official podcast of the UK’s Office for National Statistics. I'm Miles Fletcher and this time we're getting back to nature as we explore the work of the ONS in measuring the economic and social value of the natural environment.
Is classical economic growth - as measured by gross domestic product or GDP - always achieved at the expense of the environment? What price can we put on the amenities our environment provides? What is the green economy and what are green jobs? And what are the key data to watch as policymakers strive for net zero carbon emissions, while also seeking to improve national prosperity?
Our guides through the rich and perhaps under explored landscape of environmental data are ONS’s Deputy Director for Environmental Statistics Analysis, Ian Townsend; Head of Natural Capital Accounts, Gemma Thomas; and Sophie Barrand, Monetary Accounts lead in the Environmental Accounts team.
Welcome to you all.
Ian
to
come to you
first. The
ONS is
mainly
known
for
measuring the economy
and the population of the UK. So, what exactly is its role when it
comes to the environment? What are we seeking to achieve? What do we do? What do we
publish?
IAN
TOWNSEND
So the environment is quite a broad topic that links
with
a lot of other issues
and a lot of different national and devolved government departments
and other related bodies producing statistics on the environment.
And with all that range of statistics, we tend to focus
at
the ONS on the
intersections between our environment and both the economy and
society. This includes measuring what we call the Low Carbon
and
renewable energy
economy, how many green jobs there are, the greenhouse gas emissions
produced by different economic sectors, and valuing the services
that nature provides to us, as well as providing rapid
insights into what people and business think about climate
change in the environment and their actions or indeed
otherwise.
MF
And what are the major publications that
come out of the ONS that people ought to be looking
at to get a sense of what we're saying about the environment and its
value?
IT
So I mentioned a couple in the
introduction there - things like low carbon
and
renewable energy
economy, green jobs, etc... and our emissions
figures. But perhaps one that is quite worth bringing to the fore is our
natural capital accounts. So, it's something we've done for several years,
which basically looks
at the value that
ecosystems provide to nature and ecosystems provide to
us,
and the
services that provides. So, we bring this out as a report
every year -
have done so for several years
- and that looks beyond the
economy, beyond gross domestic
product, to look at all those natural
resources and we found that in 2021, the total value of all those
natural assets was around one and a half trillion pounds.
It’s such a big figure, I think
it
can be quite hard for
people to grasp. But a useful comparison might be
that it's not that far off the
1.7 trillion
pounds that
homes in the UK were valued at in 2021 as
well.
MF
It's very difficult
to arrive at a
financial figure or value like that. Can you just give us a brief
explanation of how it’s calculated?
IT
Sure. So, there are internationally agreed
guidelines that we follow around how to measure or
indeed account for the current value of what natural capital could
provide for us and our current and future
generations. And all that process, all those guidelines are aligned with how
we measure the GDP in the economy. It's really
quite
a complex
exercise and includes things like the value of
trees, rivers, peatlands, and many other habitats and natural
resources in them. We've been developing and improving
these approaches for probably at least 10 years, and
probably have
some of the most
developed accounts in this form globally. Our estimates
have improved over the years. But there are some things that
we don't cover. So, in a way, this is
probably best
seen as a kind of
partial and minimum value, even though it's already very large. And it's also part of a wider mission
that the
ONS has
to capture the
value of what's called missing capital, things that we
don't
currently measure so
well in gross domestic product. So that's including social capital as
well as
natural
capital. So that's called ‘inclusive
wealth’
and that's another publication
the ONS
produces that people
might be interested to have a look at.
MF
And it's important, I guess, to have this
economic value of the environment so that can be compared against the
traditional measure of economic progress and prosperity, which of
course is GDP. And it's sometimes – and we've heard this in other podcasts - because GDP is like the big beast
of the economic statistical world. It's very important, it's very influential, but of course
it does have significant weaknesses and omissions, and notably its lack of
account for environmental factors
being
notoriously one of
those.
IT
Sure. And actually, there's a process
going on right now internationally that would bring some of that into the
way that we measure some of the key economic indicators.
But I think one of
the key things you say is putting out there is a measure of how our
natural capital assets are doing. But I think the other real
benefit of these statistics, and
particularly the
natural capital accounts, is that it helps
literally to
account for nature to
give an estimate of some of the benefits that the environment does
provide. So, when people make decisions, they
can take that into account. We're not exactly saying that nature
has this given value. It's more that that's the value that
we've
estimated so far that
provides those. It helps people to make sure that
when they're taking their decisions,
they take into
account what
would happen if we reduced or depleted that natural capital, and
indeed, the benefits we might get in the future if we were to
increase that natural capital as well.
MF
Because – and this is the other side of
the question – high per capita GDP often goes
with high carbon emissions in an economy, doesn't it? This way, we
can look at the other side of the balance sheet and say,
well, yes, you might be achieving
this high economic performance in traditional terms, but look at
the cost on the other side and, as you say, this is part of a big
international movement to recognize that
called
‘beyond GDP’, which is a topic we've covered
in previous podcasts
already.
IT
Sure. I think, just getting back to your point
around GDP and emissions one of the things that we produce in the
ONS
is a piece around
a
different emissions measurements there are, and actually
if you look at
those, you'll see that over time, all those
measures have been reducing.
So there is an
element to which whilst the economy is expanding, we are actually
reducing emissions on all three different
measures that are available.
MF
And we say the environment is
- we're putting it at 1.5 trillion pounds
– that's the capital value of the natural
environment, broadly equivalent to the value of all the houses in the UK.
Some people might say
that's
a low figure
perhaps
you can think
we measure human capital being much, much greater than that
but that's a debate for another
time.
But
explain for
us who
is using this number,
how does it inform decision making at the moment
at national
and local level? How might it influence policymakers in future
do you think?
IT
Sure, I think it's not necessarily about the
big number
at the top although
that is one that will get a lot of interest from people and as you
say, it might be an underestimate. I mentioned that there are some
aspects of nature that we don't currently measure. But in terms
of how it's used lots and lots of detail
that's available underneath that key figure in the natural capital
accounts we publish every year, at kind of macro level. The
figures
we use are important
considerations for decision making by
UK and
devolved governments.
So Defra published a policy paper, for example, on the accounts, I
think, a couple of years back, which looked at what the key takeaways
for
policy there were
from there, and we think that some of the
figures were used in some of the bids that departments put in for the
2021 Spending Review. I think at the micro level figures are
definitely
used in the
analysis of costs and benefits that are used for judging different
government projects. It’s part of what
Department
for Environment, Food
and Rural Affairs call enabling a natural capital approach
- it
is in that guidance,
and that has a lot of impact at kind of micro level. We're also publishing
more and more
data from the natural
capital accounts at a local level. And making that available means
that councils and others can use that in their decision making as
well. And we're also building our connections and encouraging use
where we can and it's also something that's being worked on internationally as
well, which we’re part of working with other
national statistics offices and the
UN.
MF
Turning to Gemma then,
you're
the head of
natural
capital accounts at the ONS. Let's get into the nuts and bolts
then of what
contributes to this valuation, this figure, because by understanding that we
can better understand what it contributes to the economy and what
it contributes to our wellbeing. Talk us through those elements if
you would.
GEMMA
THOMAS
Yeah, of course. So as
Ian
mentioned,
there's
some international
standards that we abide by, but essentially what
we do is we
say, okay, what services does nature
provide to us? And we identify those services, and then
we attempt to put a value on them. Now those
services can fall into three broad categories. The first would be
provisioning services, which might be what you would expect the
environment to provide and nature to provide such as things like
timber, oil and gas, so it's all the goods that
are
provided by the
Environment, water, renewable energy, and they
are what we call provisioning services...
MF
How we exploit the
environment,
to put it coldly.
GT
You said that Miles, not me.
[Laughing] But yes, it's where we capture the goods
that the environment does provide. But the
other
things that
nature does for us is it regulates, so regulated services are another
part of services and where nature helps maintain the quality of the environment.
And
so a sort of
obvious example of this can be where vegetation removes pollutants
from the air, but also nature can mitigate noise.
So if
you're
in an urban area,
and there's lots of trees that can mitigate
noise pollution, or heat, it can
regulate heat. So that's another example. And the other
example that is maybe not so obvious is what we call
cultural
services and
they are
the non-material benefits that we obtain,
such as recreation. And
actually, in many of our publications, we have
found that those services provide the greatest asset value, the
cultural services, actually
almost two
thirds in 2021 of all
of that 1.5
trillion figure, 950 billion of that was from
cultural services.
MF
That's why I mentioned
exploitation
- like it or not
it's
the
traditional economic
exploitation of the environment, when we talk about those things
that we take out of the environment. But what the ONS has
established, certainly when it comes to the
UK’s
environment, it's actually
the amenity value of the environment, which
contributes more to our economy.
GT
Yes, exactly. And actually, when you
say about that exploitation, this is one of the benefits of the
natural capital accounts because we measure actually the value of
16 different services at this moment in time and it allows us to be
able to see things like actually, in terms of value, for example,
it is more valuable to the UK to have pollution removal from
woodlands than it is to obtain timber or wood fuel, and we put
values on that. So yes, as you say, it's cultural and
recreation.
And that's in a couple of ways. There's
expenditure on recreation, and tourism. But there's also, and this is the biggest asset
that we've found,
is health
benefits from recreation that was worth in 2021,
nearly half
a trillion so 445
billion.
MF
Crikey, that is
a big
number! Can
you unpack that for us then, what are the health benefits
that we're itemizing there?
GT
Research has found, outside of the ONS, that spending time in nature has
a positive impact on your health and wellbeing. But interestingly,
you need to spend on average two hours a week in nature.
So some of our
figures, and this is the
great thing
that you can sort of
dig under the hood a little bit, is you can see things like
maybe more
people are visiting
nature, but if they're not doing it for long enough or
regularly enough, they can't obtain that health benefit. And
that is what our data has found in 2021 and 2022. There
was a slight drop in the sort of health benefits gained from nature
because people weren't going for long enough. In terms
of measurement. We have experts in the team who
are excellent and they work with lots of people across government,
but essentially it's sort of calculated in the number of years of a
life lived in perfect health and then what we do is we say how much
would the NHS have to spend to provide the
equivalent health benefits and that's how it's done. But yeah, it's
just a really good example of how that sort of top figure can sound
interesting but when you dig
in is a real
story and there of nuance.
MF
I guess that also reflects the importance of
when we're talking about the
environment. It's not just the great
outdoors, it's not the
wide open spaces necessarily.
It's
about having
environmental areas near towns and cities as well where
people can get out and feel the benefits of exercise and fresh air
and so forth.
GT
Exactly. And
actually it's
really interesting you mentioned
that,
because some of the
things that are found that can be quite difficult to explain to
people is that actually nature can have more value in some
situations in urban areas than in rural areas.
So if you
take the example of pollution,
there's
more pollution in
urban areas and there are more people breathing in that
pollution.
So by having
trees and woodlands, etc within them that can absorb that
pollution,
that means
that there's a higher value in that.
That's
why we have to be careful in how we explain all of our figures
because sometimes a higher value -
not
in general, not for the top level, but for some of them
-
is
not necessarily a good thing. Because if you think about it,
if there's absolutely no pollution, then
trees wouldn't be removing that pollution, and
the value of that would be zero.
So it's
a
challenging thing to communicate and get
across to users, yeah.
MF
It's a fascinating equation, isn't
it? And
also in terms
of outputs, of
course, we can't ignore the growing
influence of renewables, which of course is
energy from the environment.
GT
Yes, exactly. Yes.
And
that's a service that’s
actually
seen some really big growth in its asset size as we possibly would
expect over
recent years.
MF
Give us the numbers on that.
GT
The renewable energy was worth 40.7 billion, although I have to say - which will be surprising to some people - the oil and gas asset value is actually still higher than that at 111 billion. So, it shows that although things are changing and renewable energy has seen the biggest growth, at present oil and gas would still have a higher asset value.
MF
We'll talk a little about the
dash
for net
zero,
or progress towards
Net Zero at
least,
a little bit later.
But nonetheless, it can't be ignored that is renewable electricity provision
increased
by
we’re
saying 275%
between 2011 and 2021. The last estimates - that's 21,899 gigawatt hours. So
almost a
threefold
increase and, you
know, without being political
the
drift
of
policy
is
to
increase that much,
much more.
GT
Yeah, we have. We have
seen that, and you'll see that across
all
of our
figures. Renewable is definitely a growing
sector.
MF
We’ve talked about what we get out in a
traditional economic sense of course, but historically the biggest example
has been agriculture, and farmland. There’s a big debate going on about the use
of farmland and again, in classical GDP
terms,
the
contribution of agriculture has not been great because
it’s
been
maintained
by
subsidies
traditionally
- at the risk of
upsetting the farming
community. Could we say that the decline in
closed
farmland
being
reported
is
because less and less
of our natural environment is devoted now to agriculture? Are we saying that we can move
away from that as
long as the
other economic benefits of the environment are being delivered on
the other side of the
equation?
GT
Well, I think with any sort of
figures, you need to look at it in the round. So, you could look in isolation
within the natural capital accounts, but in reality you'd need to look
at,
you know, employment
and those sorts of things. I mean, the interesting thing about the
natural capital accounts is that technically farmed land
- we need to look at it in
its raw
state. I mean,
we can't yet separate that with our
figures, but it's about what nature provides
us. So,
for example,
we wouldn't include farmed fish, but we would
include wild fish catch. So, with the national capital
accounts, what we aim to do is separate that out. But in terms of
the amount of farmland we can record that and we can publish that and look
at it, but I think for anyone making decisions, they
probably need
to look at the
whole.
MF
But certainly we're saying that woodland, for example, is
contributing more to the economy in terms of its beneficial effects in offsetting
carbon and removing pollution, than
it
actually contributes
through the felling
of timber.
GT
Yes, yes, that is
very clear
from our
figures.
MF
And indeed there are some
other takeaways from the publication as
well as. In
cruder financial terms, just living
closer
to nature can be good
for the value of your house.
GT
Yes, yes. So, where we don't have a
price,
we have to
look
at a way to
value it. And so, we know that being close to
nature or having a nice view can add value to your
house. I think
it added
around 1.5% To the average house price in 2021, or just
under 5000
pounds,
4700. It did vary
though by the type of property and flats and maisonettes it added around 4%. So yes, being
close to nature and accessing nature, having access to green space
is really
important and
in fact we have publications on our urban accounts, which pull that
out,
and
as
well on our house
prices,
where
those interested can
look in more detail.
MF
Of course this continues to
be a big
area of
‘work in
progress’. What other measures could
potentially be included, particularly as
the response to
global warming continues to be refined and
developed?
GT
So yes, at the moment, I believe
it was mentioned earlier that we cast this almost as an
underestimate. We know there are services we're not capturing. So, for example, flood regulating
services. So how much nature helps in
preventing floods, that is an area that we are hoping to
develop, but it is quite challenging. We do look for areas where we
can maybe
produce more
local stats to help the decisions at the local level.
Because it's not just our data
that's
really
important. It
is also our methods. Our methods get used by
sort of
local authorities and
those who maybe want to produce their own sort of
natural capital accounts for their region. So, it's something we're looking to
develop.
MF
And I guess it's going to be vital if we're looking at an era of increased house
building. Once again, we can look at the
other side of the balance sheet and say, okay, this is this is going to be
the environmental cost of the development before
major decisions are taken.
GT
Yes, essentially. It’s
just
about making it easier for decision makers to see
that
actually
it does have this value,
rather
than before when
it would be anecdotal.
Now by having these figures, you
can measure those up and use it in sort of cost benefit analysis.
Yeah.
[Music Break]
MF
Well, that's a fascinating look
under the bonnet of natural capital, a concept
that's clearly evolving in stature, in a really fascinating and important
way. Another area that the ONS is very much involved
in, and
a very
important set
of publications that the ONS produces are the environmental
accounts. Sophie Barrand joins us now. Sophie, you're the lead on monetary accounts in that team. Just to
start, can you explain for us what's covered in the environmental
accounts; what's the publication
for?
SOPHIE
BARRAND
Yeah, so our environmental
accounts ultimately looks to measure the contribution of
the environment to the economy and the impact of economic activity
on the environment. So, when we're thinking about changes in an
area that's constantly evolving,
it's
rather a
tricky thing.
So,
in general, what we
consider is how our measures work as different pieces
of this net zero puzzle where each informs the other.
So,
our accounts produce
information on UK greenhouse gas emissions, things like economic
measures of low carbon activities, government revenue from
environmental taxes, and things like the use of different energy
types and whether we're moving to more renewable
alternatives, just to name a few. So ultimately, we're
looking to quantify
the flows that impact on the environment through both physical and
monetary ways.
MF
So natural capital if you like is
the stock, and
in the
Environmental Accounts we’re looking at the flows,
we’re
looking at the nature
of change.
SB
Absolutely, yes.
So,
we're
looking at measures
of things that can sometimes be considered as the green
economy. So, if we were to try and put a value
on things like the environmental goods and services sector, the
services and goods that sort of flow within that space, we look to
produce annual estimates of that data. And within that we can also
draw from different measures from each parts of our accounts. And because we
produce our data on what's called a residency basis, that is any
activity as part of UK registered businesses, it means that it's
aligned with our national accounts data so we can start to compare across
our measures, and consider things like how does our data compare to
measures such as GDP or GVA and where we sort of fit within
that space. So, it's really interesting to
uncover some of these trends.
MF
And when we
talk about progress towards net zero, this is where the action
happens, isn't it? This is where progress towards that is
tracked.
SB
So within net zero, the measures that
typically get used to action net zero is the territorial approach
to measuring greenhouse gas emissions. So those are figures produced by
DESNZ
and what we do is we
communicate that information on a residency basis to align with the
national accounts side of things.
MF
DESNZ being the government department concerned
here.
SB
Yes, so the Department of Energy
Security and Net Zero. And what we can do with our
accounts is that we can compare with regards to broader measures
such as GDP and GVA, how we can capture some of
those trends, but what we're ultimately seeing
across all three of the measures of greenhouse gas emissions is
that they are falling over time, which we can go into a bit more
detail on.
MF
Yeah, well let's get stuck into that detail
because it's a crucial area of public policy
right now. And it's surely going to continue to be
over the next few years. What are the data telling us
at the moment
then, what are the most compelling findings
around greenhouse gas emissions and carbon
generally?
SB
Yeah, so what we've seen is a reduction in overall
greenhouse gas emissions since 1990. Though we have experienced an
increase in recent years that does reflect the economy coming back
from the period affected by the Coronavirus
pandemic, and what we've seen is that the
largest contribution to the decrease across our time series has
come from energy industries such as electricity and gas supply, and
what we've seen as well is the compositional shift within
this space where there's been a shift away from fossil fuel use
and a
move towards
renewable sources. So, for example, in 2022, we saw the
energy from renewable sources accounted for nearly 14% of all energy use in the UK. And
although that figure has been increasing, we are still seeing a
large reliance on fossil fuels, and it remains at 81% in 2022.
MF
You talk about the
substantial reduction
in emissions, what about the suggestion that is sometimes made that countries, like the UK, have effectively exported their
emissions simply by closing down their heavy fossil fuel driven
industries?
SB
Just in terms of exporting
emissions, it's a really
tricky space.
MF
How so?
SB
So,
for example, within
our statistics, because we cover a residency basis, we do capture
some parts that might sort of deviate into that space. Because we
measure UK registered businesses and residents the
effect of things like UK tourism and the emissions data for that is
going to be captured within that space. But then for example, when
we look at the aviation industry within the UK, we do capture some
of that so where we have the UK registered businesses such as
British Airways, activity from that space across
our accounts will be captured, but things like Ryanair wouldn't be
captured because I believe it’s an Irish
registered
business.
MF
I was going to ask you how flights are accounted
for,
because we're told
constantly, of course, that they are a big contributor to
emissions. So if you're a British airline you count towards UK emissions,
it’s
not flights flying
over Britain or flights terminating or starting in Britain. It's a
much more economic analysis, then, it's aeroplanes that are essentially British
owned, is that how we do it?
SB
Exactly yeah, so it's UK
registered. So if they're a company that are registered as being a
UK business, then it will capture that activity, but there's no
sort of physical boundaries that you might experience with other
measures. It's more of, as you say, an economic term
where it's more about the registration of the business.
MF
Well that does
say something about
what a global issue this is really. If it's not measured in that
local way, it's an issue for the world to
address collectively.
SB
Absolutely. And by combining
those international comparisons, it should give you that full
picture of exactly what's happening there. We can do that across
different measures of our accounts as well. And for example, within
the environmental taxation space, we put our taxation data in the
context of the sort of broader international space where we
compare against EU countries for example, so with
all of our measures, what we're really looking to do is to sort of
piece together this net zero puzzle, and each of our
measures look to inform the other, and it is not without that broad
picture that you can actually start to understand some of
these.
MF
Certainly where we are now,
it's
households that are the biggest emitters of
greenhouse gases, and previously of course it used to be the industrial
sector.
So it
explains the policy focus doesn’t it on households and vehicles as
well, because those
are the big emitters of greenhouse gases as far as the UK
is
now
concerned.
SB
Yes. So you touched on households
there, as you say they now emit more greenhouse gas emissions than
any other economic sector. And while households do tend to have
limited influence over emissions related to things like heating
their homes, we have seen that half of all household emissions do
come from travel. And as you can imagine, we saw dips in these in
the Coronavirus period. Where the biggest emitters used to
be energy and manufacturing there has been a switch from oil
to gas and things around improved processes. And the more recent
increase that we've seen in renewables has seen big declines in
greenhouse gas emissions from these two sectors in
particular.
MF
Have we seen any lasting impacts from the
pandemic or have things just reverted back
to exactly as they were
before?
SB
So it depends on which measure
you're looking at as to how continuous the impact of the
Coronavirus pandemic was with our statistics. So for example, with
our environmental taxes, we saw quite a big dip there after a
relatively stable annual increase. Since then it's pretty much
bounced back to what it was in 2019 and we’ll look to future years to see
whether this continues. Transport is now responsible for 16% of all
UK greenhouse gas emissions and because of its increased importance
in our stats when all transport stops during the pandemic
greenhouse gas emissions did fall dramatically by about 11%
or
so, and with the
recovering of transport we have seen the greenhouse gas emissions
have increased in recent years.
MF
So to that extent
people have reverted
to their same old pre-pandemic ways, which raises a whole question
of how
policymakers can
influence behaviors and of course the classic way for policymakers to stop people doing
things is to tax them. And the
effectiveness, or otherwise, of environmental taxes
Sophie is
something we also
look into, because that's a very important factor in all
this.
Tell us what
we’ve
found
about all
that.
SB
The intention of those is to
create these behavioural shifts and allow people to be
making those decisions to move towards more environmentally
friendly alternatives. So what we found is that through this
taxation we have raised 52 and a half billion pounds in 2023 in the
UK, with fuel duty being the single largest tax contributor to this
at nearly half the amount. This coincides quite nicely with what
we're seeing on the greenhouse gas emissions data where consumer expenditure from
car
transport is
contributing largely to this. In the international
space,
when we look
at our environmental tax figure as a
percentage of GDP, this now amounts to 2% of GDP. So
that sits a bit lower than the EU average, which currently sits at
2.3%.
MF
What other environmental taxes
are there
then
that are
included, which again, might be
varied
or even increased in
the years to come?
SB
That's a very good question. So we're
constantly considering how our statistics might
evolve,
and
how
our definitions might
evolve. Some examples about environmental taxes include things like
energy taxes, so things like your fuel duty and taxes on the type
of energy sources that you're using. We then also have things like
transport taxes. So these are air passenger duty, and things like
that. But then we also have what we call pollution and resource
taxes. So one of the most recently introduced ones of those is
plastic packaging tax. So we do split up the different tax types in
our release.
MF
And again, on a local level, there's
the
whole question
of how
effective low
emission zones are, and the crackdown on
old diesel cars and
so forth. Is that local picture available if you're a local
authority seeking to investigate the effectiveness of measures
like that?
SB
So we don't currently disaggregate
our data into below UK level unfortunately, but we are constantly
discussing these things and I believe there's a discussion this
year around the low emission zones and how we classify
these.
We generally follow the national
tax list when it comes to categorizing our different taxes. So
we're regularly reviewing these and considering which could be
considered environmental and which wouldn’t.
MF
Interesting. Finally then with
you Sophie, the whole question of
jobs
and
employment, because if you look at traditional
economic measures you want to have lots of people in productive
industries making things, creating economic value. When the environmental factor
comes in of course, you can see reasons why
it's not such a great idea to have lots of people working in
high
emitting industries,
and
that’s where
the whole concept of
green jobs - and on the other side of
the fence, non-green jobs – is something the ONS has
been developing its
work around as well.
SB
Yes, absolutely. So
in looking at
employment, which is an area of the economy with high user
interest, particularly with regards to the green job space, we can
look at things like jobs in high emitting industries as an example.
So what we've seen is that five industry sections have accounted
for around 82% of total industry greenhouse gas emissions across
the UK, and of these five industries they employed around 16%. So
that's one in every six or so UK
employees.
MF
Now there are some quite substantial
variations around the UK regionally, when it comes to the numbers
of people employed in these non-green jobs, aren’t
there?
SB
Yeah, so what we're seeing is
that one in five Midlands workers were in high emissions industries
in this time compared with one in 12 workers in
London.
MF
And Gemma then,
this idea of a
green job and a non-green job, how do we define those
two things?
GT
Well Miles, it's really, really
challenging, and it's something that
ONS
has been working on
for a long time and it's been a real leader in the field.
You’d
think,
“Oh, green job”, and that term is used a lot.
But in reality, it can mean different things to different
people. ONS has done a lot of work over the
years like with the low carbon economy, measuring that
where
that is looking at
things in the low carbon and renewable energy space. But we
realised that people wanted more and they
wanted this definition and after a lot of work and discussion, we
have agreed a definition where it's as: ‘Employment and activity that
contributes to protecting or restoring the environment, including
those that mitigate or adapt to climate change.’ And I think the key thing is it's
wider than net zero. It's also about nature. It's also about jobs
that are protecting nature, not just those that are helping to
reduce emissions. And then in terms of non-green or brown
as
it's sometimes
called,
that is a challenge.
And that's where Sophie has talked about, we look at high
emitting industries. Because in reality you need to be
practical,
and those are
the industries that maybe we'll see the most change
- the industries that have high
emissions. The real challenge, though, is that our current
classification systems, you know, some of those green
jobs will occur in those high emission industries. You think of things
like the energy
sector, not only does it have oil and gas jobs, but it also has
renewable energies, and our way that we currently do economic
statistics doesn't allow us to break that down. And that's the big
challenge and that's what people are grappling with including us at
the ONS.
MF
Thank you Gemma. And Ian then, finally from
you.
This whole question of nailing
down precisely what is a green
job,
what is the green economy
- as we've heard from
Gemma, it's very dynamic
and there is
a lot of work
going on in
this area.
But
where
is this all going
internationally? How are we collaborating with other
statistical organisations around the world on
this,
and is there
anything we can learn from other
countries?
IT
I think in many ways we're near
the front of the pack on this internationally. So a lot of the work
we've been doing is about sharing our
experiences,
and in the kind of
broader space of environment measurement we're very involved
with the UN in particular, particularly
on natural capital accounts. And we're also looking at some major
revisions to some of the systems that underlie how we do these
things. So for example, there's a big shift internationally in the
way that we measure GDP and there's an element of that which is
around the environment, so we're engaged with that
too.
So quite a lot
going on in that space. We also have regular bilaterals with other national stats
institutes as
well,
to share learning and
understand what other people are doing. And obviously, the
more organisations doing this work, the more mutual
learning we can benefit from as well.
MF
And how do you see things developing
from here on, in terms of ONS’s measurement of the
environment?
IT
I think we’ve been able to do
quite a lot over the
last few years, building on great work over
a much
longer period. And there's a lot that we could be
doing- of
course the challenge is always about channeling the
resources available to the highest impact activity that we can be
doing. I think
one of the
things we're going to be looking at is to move to
accredited ‘official
statistics’ status for the natural capital
accounts. It might sound a bit inward looking but it's a real mark
of quality that we'd like to have, and it would set it
alongside economic statistics that have
that kind of accreditation. We're also reflecting
on,
of course, the new
government's priorities following the general election. One of the
things that we've been experiencing quite a lot of demand for, and
particularly from local and combined authorities across the country
is around
greater granularity for our
environmental data - so data at Local Authority
/ Combined
Authority
levels.
So that might be in the
mix.
It’s
something we've been thinking about and gradually releasing
more for.
We’ll also
continue to be working across the ONS and across the wider
government statistics service on the topic as
well,
so do watch
out for collaborations in that space. And of course, as we've just
talked about, the international aspects as
well. And of course, we always welcome interest and feedback in our
work,
so if people
are interested, please do get in touch.
MF
I’m sure they will.
And
it’s
worth
pointing out to our
listeners that once a quarter,
the ONS
publishes key statistics
on Wellbeing and
Beyond GDP, which can help people understand
the environment in the context of the economy. And I think on the same day you
can also check
out the latest quarterly greenhouse gas
emissions
data.
That’s it for another episode of
‘Statistically Speaking’. Thanks to Gemma Thomas, Sophie Barrand
and Ian Townsend for joining us. And of course as ever thanks to you for
listening.
You can subscribe to future episodes of this podcast on Spotify, Apple podcasts and all the other major podcast platforms.
You can also follow us on ‘X’ - previously known as Twitter - via the @ONSfocus feed.
I'm
Miles Fletcher and
from myself, and our producer Steve Milne...
goodbye.
ENDS