Department of Energy and Climate Change says Greenhouse Gases Hit 21-year High

Some new official figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) have just revealed some very shocking news. Apparently greenhouse gases, last year, rose 2.8 percent to 582 million tonnes. This means that these greenhouse gases hit a 21-year high last year.

This news is kind of disappointing since people have been doing all they can to try and lower greenhouse gases. This has people saying that not enough is being done to lower greenhouse gases in the UK.

Overall, this big increase is being blamed on the economic recovery. Thus, the results are kind of bittersweet. People did want the economy to recover so that more jobs could be made, but people did not want greenhouse gases to go up as a result.

Of course, green groups were very quick to point out that things are a lot worse than what it sounds. Although the economy did improve, the rise in carbon dioxide is a lot more than the rise in the economy, meaning that not enough is being done to keep greenhouse gases down.

These reports show that carbon dioxide, which is the main greenhouse gas people worry about, rose by 4 percent to 492 tonnes. This is the second largest rise since 1990. However, some say that the very cold winter at the end of the year last year could have been to blame for some of this. People had to keep the heat running a lot more this winter than winters in the past.

One of the biggest problems that people see is that there were some technical problems at some nuclear power stations last year, meaning that a lot of the power that was being made was coming from coal and gas fire power stations. This would, of course, increase carbon emissions.