§ Norman BakerTo ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what estimate she has made of the external costs associated with energy wasted from inefficiencies, with particular reference to the environmental costs. [184581]
§ Mr. MorleyIn January 2002, a Government Economic Service working paper "Estimating the Social Cost of Carbon Emissions" was published as a joint Defra-Treasury publication. The GES paper suggested £70 per tonne of carbon (within a range of £35 to £140/tC) as an illustrative estimate for the global damage cost of carbon emissions.
The Government's recently published Energy Efficiency Action Plan identified target annual savings of 12.1 M tonnes of carbon by 2010. The corresponding total annual value of the reduced environmental damage is therefore around £850 M/y.