DESNZ spent £64,376 flying ministers around the world in just three months, burping out around 22 tonnes of CO2 equivalent into the atmosphere. Almost all of it was on trips to climate conferences. That is the ministerial bill alone. As the Mail revealed, the full cost of the department’s COP30 delegation came to more than £800,000, with 73 officials making the trip to Brazil. Their flights cost £210,450, with another £6,091 spent on carbon credits to ‘offset’ the emissions…
Ed Miliband flew to Brazil twice in a single month, first for the COP World Leaders’ Summit and then again for the main conference a week later, at a combined ministerial cost of £25,750. His two return flights produced roughly 4.6 tonnes of CO2, the equivalent of nearly a full year of average UK household emissions…
The biggest single ministerial bill belonged to climate minister Katie White, whose seven-night COP30 trip cost £30,551. The flight was £11,078, but White also billed the taxpayer £19,473 in accommodation and expenses on the ground, nearly £2,800 a night.
Across the five ministerial trips, DESNZ ministers clocked up roughly 11.5 tonnes of CO2 from flights alone. Applying DEFRA’s own recommended “radiative forcing multiplier” for aviation bumps the total up to around 22 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. The average UK household produces about six tonnes a year. The department responsible for cutting emissions burned through nearly four years’ worth in a single quarter…
