Scotland's carbon footprint: 1998-2016

Revisions since the previous Carbon Footprint for Scotland

There have been seven releases of the model used to estimate Scotland's Carbon Footprint.

Chart 8 shows the differences between the 2015 and 2016 releases of the carbon footprint. Revisions to previously published estimates in this release are comparatively small and relate to revisions to the global emissions and trade data used to construct the multi-regional input-output model used in this carbon footprint.

Chart 8. Scotland's Carbon Footprint. Comparison of 1990-2015 and 1990-2016 series. Values in MtCO2e

Revisions between the 1990-2012 and 1990-2016 publications

Since the carbon footprint was first published, successive releases have used different versions of the UK MRIO model. The 2012 release used a 2-region model which only distinguished the UK and the Rest of the World as trade regions. The 2013, 2015 and 2016 releases used a four region model, distinguishing imports from Europe, China and the Rest of World, using trade data from the Eora global MRIO. The 2017, 2018 and 2019 model adopted the same four regions but used trade data from the EXIOBASE MRIO. From 2020 the UK MRIO model will move to a 14 region configuration – early analysis suggests this will result in a <1% change in total results. The 2019 model presents the most accurate calculation to date.