The UK pays more than the EU average in green taxes, while the UK tax take more than doubled between 1993 and 2014, according to the latest statistics on environmental taxes for 2014 released this week by the Office for National Statistics.

Environmental taxes raised £44.6 billion in the UK in 2014, providing  7.5% of all revenue from taxes and social contributions (TSC) during the period. The ONS said that households paid an average of £765 in environmental taxes in 2012, the latest information available.

Data on UK environmental tax revenues are available for the years 1993 through to 2014, with comparable data on environmental taxes available for the other EU member states for the years 2002 through to 2012.

Analysis of the figures shows that in 2012, environmental tax revenue in the UK was equivalent to 2.5% of national GDP. The comparable figure for the EU-28 as a whole was 2.4%.

Environmental taxes made a larger contribution to TSC for the UK in every year of the time series compared with the EU-28 average. In 2012, environmental taxes contributed 7.5% of TSC for the UK, compared with 6.3% for the EU-28 average (Figure 2). Slovenia and Bulgaria each raised over 10% of their total taxes and social contributions from environmental taxes (10.2% and 10.1% respectively). In 2012, environmental taxes contributed the lowest share of total taxes and social contributions in France (4.4%).

In 2014, nearly three quarters (72.9%) of all income from UK environmental taxes were energy taxes – which comprise taxes on energy production and on energy products (e.g. coal, oil products, natural gas and electricity), including transport costs.

Pollution and resource taxes include taxes on the extraction of raw materials and on the management of waste. Only 3.4% of total environmental tax revenue comprised pollution and resource taxes in 2014. Landfill tax made the largest contribution to pollution and resource taxes. In 2014, this tax generated £1.1 billion in revenue, representing 75.8% of all income from pollution and resource taxes.

According to the ONS, revenue from environmental taxes has more than doubled between 1993 and 2014. UK government revenue from environmentally related taxes has increased by, on average, 5.0% (in current prices) per year since 1993 (Figure 4). Total revenue in 2014 (£44.6 billion) was 2.5 times greater than revenue in 1993 (£17.6 billion).

Just under half of environmental taxes were paid by households in 2012

It is possible to break down environmental tax data by economic activity, to identify who paid the taxes. The latest reference year for which data are available is 2012.

Businesses paid a total of £20.8 billion in environmental taxes in 2012, corresponding to half (50.1%) of total environmental tax revenue received during the year. The largest contributing sectors were manufacturing (£4.4 billion) and transportation and storage (£3.4 billion). Households contributed £20.4 billion in environmental taxes (49.1%), with the remainder comprised payments from non-residents and a small share of revenue which could not be allocated to a specific industry.

Pollution and resource taxes were the only environmental taxes where households were not the largest contributor - households did not pay any pollution or resource taxes across the time series. The main sectors contributing to these particular taxes were water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities (33.1%) and services (32.2%). Just under a fifth (19.3%) of pollution and resource taxes were paid by the mining and quarrying sector in 2012.

ONS data shows revenues more than 10 times higher than HM Treasury figures

In 2010, the UK’s coalition government committed to increasing the proportion of revenue from environmental taxes. To measure this, HM Treasury developed a separate definition based on the following principles:

• the tax is explicitly linked to the government’s environmental objectives

• the primary objective of the tax is to encourage environmentally positive behaviour change

• the tax is structured in relation to environmental objectives, for example: the more polluting the behaviour, the greater the tax levied

The definition includes the following six taxes: climate change levy, aggregates levy, landfill tax, EU emissions trading scheme (EU-ETS), carbon reduction commitment, and carbon price floor. This is narrower than the definition used by ONS - meaning that total environmental taxes data published by HM Treasury are much lower than the figures included in the ONS figures. HM Treasury’s latest figures show that environmental tax revenue in 2011/12 was £3.1 billion. In contrast, the ONS figures show that revenue from environmentally related taxes was £40.2 billion in 2011 and £41.3 billion in 2012.