Scientists for Future Austria
by Martin Auer
If the world's militaries were a country, they would have the fourth largest carbon footprint, larger than that of Russia. A new study by Stuart Parkinson (Scientists for Global Responsibility, SGR) and Linsey Cottrell (Conflict and Environment Observatory, CEOBS) finds that a likely 2% of global CO5,5 emissions are attributable to the world's militaries1.
Military greenhouse gas emissions data are often incomplete, hidden in general categories, or not collected at all. Scientists for Future have over this problem already reported. There are large gaps in the reports of the countries according to the UNFCCC Framework Convention on Climate Change. This, the authors of the study believe, is one reason why climate science largely overlooks this factor. In the IPCC's current, sixth assessment report, the contribution of the military to climate change is hardly dealt with.
To illustrate the importance of the problem, the study uses available data from a small number of countries to infer total military greenhouse gases. Linked to this is the hope of initiating more and more detailed studies around the world, as well as efforts to reduce military greenhouse gas emissions
To give you an idea of how the researchers from SGR and CEOBS came to their results, here is a rough outline of the method. The detailed description can be found here here.
Limited data is available on greenhouse gas emissions for the US, UK and some EU countries. Some of them were announced directly by military authorities, some through independent research determined.
The researchers took the number of active military personnel per country or per world region as a starting point. These are collected annually by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS).
Relatively reliable figures on stationary emissions (i.e. from barracks, offices, data centers, etc.) per capita are available from the USA, Great Britain and Germany. For Great Britain that is 5 t CO2e per year, for Germany 5,1 t CO2e and for the USA 12,9 t CO2e. Since these three countries together are already responsible for 45% of global military spending, the researchers see this data as a viable basis to extrapolate from. The estimates include the respective degree of industrialization, the fossil share in energy consumption, and the number of military bases in climatically extreme regions that require more energy for heating or cooling. The results for the USA are also considered typical for Canada, Russia and Ukraine. 9 t CO2e per capita are assumed for Asia and Oceania, as well as for the Middle East and North Africa. 5 t CO2e are assumed for Europe and Latin America and 2,5 t CO2e per capita and year for sub-Saharan Africa. These numbers are then multiplied by the number of active military personnel in each region.
For some important countries one can also find the ratio of stationary emissions to mobile emissions, ie emissions from aircraft, ships, submarines, land vehicles and spacecraft. For example, in Germany mobile emissions are only 70% of stationary, while in the UK mobile emissions are 260% of stationary. The stationary emissions can be multiplied by this factor.
The last contribution are the emissions from the supply chains, i.e. from the production of military goods, from weapons to vehicles to buildings and uniforms. Here, the researchers were able to rely on information from the internationally active armaments companies Thales and Fincantieri, for example. In addition, there are general economic statistics that show the ratio of operational emissions to emissions from the supply chains for various areas. The researchers assume that the emissions from the production of the various military goods are 5,8 times as high as the operational emissions of the military.
According to the study, this results in a carbon footprint for the military of between 2 and 1.644 million tons of CO3.484e, or between 2% and 3,3% of global emissions.
These figures do not include greenhouse gas emissions from acts of war such as fires, damage to infrastructure and ecosystems, reconstruction and medical care for survivors.
The researchers emphasize that military emissions are among those that a government can directly influence through its military spending, but also through regulations. To do this, however, military emissions must first be measured. The CEOBS has a Framework for recording military emissions under the UNFCCC worked out .
Title montage: Martin Auer
1 Parkinson, Stuart; Cottrell; Linsey (2022): Estimating the Military's Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Lancaster, Mytholmroyd. https://ceobs.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/SGRCEOBS-Estimating_Global_MIlitary_GHG_Emissions_Nov22_rev.pdf
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