UK greenhouse-gas emissions measured on a residence basis fell by 1.0% in 2025, with provisional estimates placing the total at 473 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent. The comparable figure for 2024 was 478 million tonnes.
The new estimate is part of the environmental accounts, which align emissions with the national accounts and assign them to economic activities. It is a different measure from the territorial series that counts emissions occurring within UK borders. The two approaches answer different questions and their totals should not be substituted for one another.
A continuing long-term fall, but a modest annual change
The 2025 total was 42.4% below the 1990 level, the first year in the series. That long-term comparison shows the direction of travel over several decades, while the 1.0% annual fall describes a far smaller change between the latest two estimates.
Manufacturing made the largest contribution to the reduction in 2025. Its emissions fell from 64 million tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent in 2024 to 58 million tonnes in 2025, a decrease of 9.7%. The figures describe emissions allocated to the industry; they do not by themselves establish why output, energy use or emissions changed at any individual manufacturer.
Not every part of the account moved down. Consumer expenditure remained the largest single contributor to residence-based emissions, accounting for 26.5% of the total. Its emissions increased from 124 million tonnes to 125 million tonnes. The rise included a 2.6% increase in consumer travel emissions. Transport and storage was the next largest contributor at 16.4% of the national total.
What the measure covers
Residence-based accounts arrange direct emissions using the classifications applied to economic activity. They include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and several fluorinated gases, expressed in a common carbon-dioxide-equivalent unit. That allows gases with different warming effects to be reported in one total, but it does not turn the total into a measure of air quality in a particular neighbourhood or city.
The release also reports emissions intensity: the amount of emissions associated with each £ million of gross value added. This measure was unchanged in 2025 at 0.14 thousand tonnes of carbon-dioxide equivalent per £ million of gross value added. A stable intensity figure does not mean that every industry had unchanged emissions, as the manufacturing and consumer-expenditure movements show. It instead compares the overall emissions account with the scale of economic output.
The statistics are national rather than London-specific. They do not provide a borough-by-borough total or a reading for any individual street, workplace or household. For London readers, the release is therefore a UK-wide account of direct emissions connected with economic activity, not a separate measure of the capital’s emissions.
Why the provisional label matters
All of the 2025 figures are provisional. The estimates update 2024 activity data with information on 2025 production where it is available, or with proxy information where it is not. Emission factors for 2025 are then applied to estimate the mass of gases associated with those activities.
That approach gives a timely indication of the latest full calendar year, but it can be revised as fuller information becomes available. The 473 million-tonne estimate should therefore be read as the current provisional picture, rather than a final accounting of the year.
The immediate result is a national total that has edged lower, alongside different movements within the economy. Manufacturing showed the largest reduction, while consumer expenditure and consumer travel rose. Future releases will determine whether the latest pattern is maintained and whether later information changes the preliminary estimates.
