By KATIE WESTON FOR MAILONLINE
Cop26 is expected to have a carbon footprint twice as large as the last conference on climate change, making it the most carbon-intensive summit of its kind.
A preliminary report for the UK Government by consultants Arup states 102,500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent (tCO2e) is due to be released by the summit in Glasgow.
This comes in comparison to 51,101 tCO2e from Cop25 in Madrid in 2019.
Around 60 per cent is produced by international flights taken by world leaders and business magnates including Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, said The Scotsman newspaper.
His £48million Gulf Stream led a 400-strong parade of private jets into Cop26 a fortnight ago, including those belonging to Prince Albert of Monaco, scores of royals and dozens of ‘green’ CEOs.
The findings come as Cop26 nears the end of its second full week in Glasgow, with more than 30,000 people expected to attend the conference.
Boris Johnson, who was condemned after returning to London last Tuesday via private jet, is pictured arriving at the Cop26 UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow on November 10
The UK Government said this year’s summit is the largest climate change conference so far, and the Arup report includes emissions from both the blue and green zones.
The Arup report said its figure of 102,500 tCO2e represented ‘the best working assessment of the emissions from the event’.
Commenting on the report, Greenpeace UK’s Dr Doug Parr said: ‘The meeting in Glasgow is not supposed to be a demonstration of sustainable lifestyles, and it shouldn’t be judged in those terms.
‘But the failure to reach any meaningful agreement about limiting aviation’s vast carbon emissions – at a conference where 60% of their emissions came from aviation, with a backing chorus of media outrage at the private jet hypocrisy of the elites – really highlights the lack of equity in these talks.
‘Creating loopholes for the use of the rich not only maintains their disproportionately high emissions, but makes it so much harder to persuade anyone else to cut.’
The total greenhouse gas emissions for Cop25, which was held in Madrid in 2019, stood at 51,101 tCO2e, while at Cop21 in Paris in 2015 the figure was 43,000 tCO2e.
