It is misleading to say that greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by 14% in the past four years in Spain

Pedro Sánchez, the new president of the Spanish Government, stated in his first speech during the investiture debate in the Congress of Deputies (Spain’s lower house of parliament) that his government had “managed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 14%” in the past four years. And, he went on, with a growing economy to boot.

This claim is misleading. It is true that gross greenhouse gas emissions were reduced in Spain by 13.7% between 2017 and 2021, according to Spain’s Ministry for Ecological Transition (Miteco), which provides the latest data available. It was a period in which the gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 5.14%, according to data from the Spanish Statistical Office (INE). However, despite the overall downward trend, there was a 6.1% rise in emissions in 2021 following the sharp decline in 2020 in conjunction with the covid-19 pandemic.

“In just four years […] we’ve managed to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 14%, with a growing economy”.

The fall in emissions in 2020 and their recovery in 2021 occurred as the state’s GDP fell and recovered in the same years as a result of the health crisis. Therefore, the economic standstill caused by the pandemic played a key role in this drop in emissions, which rapidly recovered as soon as regular activities started up again.

There are no consolidated data for 2022, but the Ministry has published its first estimates. According to the Progress of the National Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory for 2022, emissions increased by about 1.7% comparted to the previous year. Bearing this in mind, we can observe that greenhouse gas emissions have actually been reduced by 10.7% in the past four years (between 2018 and 2022).

Another data source is the Sustainability Observatory. The figures they provide in a report to which Verificat was given access show a 14.8% reduction in emissions between 2017 and 2021, with a 5.1% increase in the year 2021. According to this source, emissions increased by another 5.7% in 2022, which means that, between 2018 and 2022, the emissions levels fell by 8.4%.

Sánchez could also be referring to the net greenhouse gas emissions. These take into account the contributions from land use, i.e. the emissions and removals of GHG from fields, forests, grasslands, etc. In this case, there was a 15.6% drop in emissions between 2017 and 2021 and an 11.8% drop between 2018 and 2022 – both percentages according to Miteco – figures that differ from those stated by the new president of the Government.

If we base calculations on the Sustainability Observatory’s figures, there was a 15.6% drop in emissions between 2017 and 2021, and a 8.4% drop between 2018 and 2022.
Despite the recent rebound of emissions levels, both gross and net indicators have shown a downward trend since 2007, when Spain’s greenhouse gas emissions peaked.