UK natural capital accounts: 2024

• The total asset value of ecosystem services in the UK was around £1.8 trillion in 2022, an increase of 11% since 2018.
• Health benefits from recreation made the largest contribution to the total asset value of UK ecosystem services, at £489 billion in 2022.
• The total annual value of ecosystem services in the UK was £87 billion in 2022; this is almost twice the 2021 level, largely because of oil and gas price fluctuations.
• The air pollution regulation service made up 81% of the annual value of all regulating services in 2022; nature removed almost 1.4 million tonnes of pollutants from the air.
• The net annual value of greenhouse gas regulating services was estimated to be negative £212 million in 2022; this is likely because some habitats, such as degraded peatland, emit more greenhouse gases than they remove.
• Renewable electricity provisioning was almost five times higher in 2022 than 2011, at 99,192 gigawatt hours (GWh), compared with 21,899 GWh, respectively.
• An estimated 20 million people gained health benefits from recreation in nature in 2022.

Natural wealth is reflected in the productivity of soils, and access to clean water and recreational green space, for example. Any natural resource or process that supports human life, society, and the economy is an important part of our natural capital.

Natural capital accounting estimates the current value of natural wealth and what it could provide for current and future generations. This is also an important aspect of a wider move to better understand inclusive wealth, as defined in our New Beyond GDP measures for the UK article and as described in The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review published by the UK government.

Our natural capital monetary estimates should be interpreted as a partial or minimum value of the services provided by the natural environment. This is because they currently exclude some services, such as flood protection from natural resources.

We are working to include as much of the economic value of the natural world as possible, which is a challenge given its scale and complexity. We provide economic valuations as part of the United Nations System of Environmental-Economic Accounting — Ecosystem Accounting (PDF, 5.33MB). In addition to this, we continue to develop methods for tracking changes in ecosystems' extent and condition, as described in our Habitat extent and condition, natural capital, UK: 2022 bulletin.

You can download the data used in this publication from our All data related to UK natural capital accounts: 2024 webpage.

Enclosed farmland accounted for 50% of the UK's land area in 2021 (Figure 1), down from 54% in 1990. This is an 8% decrease in this land type over that period. Our UK natural capital accounts: 2023 bulletin has a Sankey diagram in Figure 1 to show changes in habitat extent between 1990 and 2021.

We use UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) Land Cover Maps to create measures of extent for seven terrestrial habitats. We use other sources for our Woodland natural capital accounts bulletin and our Urban natural capital accounts bulletin.

Ecosystem services estimate the contribution of natural assets to the economy and society, in either physical volume or monetary value. These include:

• provisioning services, such as food, water, and non-renewable natural resources like minerals, oil and gas

• regulating services, such as pollution removal

• cultural services, such as recreation

The total annual value for the ecosystem services we are currently able to measure was £87 billion (in 2023 prices) in 2022, the latest year with complete data. This is nearly twice the annual value for 2021. This can be attributed to rapidly changing energy prices affecting oil and gas provisioning estimates, as described in our The energy intensity of the Consumer Prices Index: 2022 article, and the increased value placed on green space as a proportion of house prices. Oil and gas provisioning had the highest annual value of all the services in 2022, valued at £39 billion.

Figure 2: The value of oil and gas as an ecosystem service has fluctuated between £1.5 billion in 2015 and £39.4 billion in 2022

Annual value for ecosystem services in the UK, 1998 to 2022

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In 2022, the total annual values currently measured for ecosystem services were £44 billion for England, £39 billion for Scotland, £2 billion for Wales, and £1 billion for Northern Ireland.

Figure 3: Recreation and tourism had the highest annual value for both England and Wales in 2022

Annual value of ecosystem services in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, 1998 to 2022

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Notes:

1. Comparable data for Northern Ireland are not available for urban heat regulating.

Provisioning services refer to tangible goods that people can harvest, extract, or derive from the environment, such as food, water, energy, and materials. In principle, these capture the value of nature's contribution to downstream production and exclude any form of industrial processing.

We provide estimates for agricultural biomass, oil, gas, coal, timber, woodfuel, mineral and metal extractions, fish, water, and renewable electricity provision.

There was an 18% decline in the physical flow of fish provisioning between 2016 and 2022. This is because of reductions in fishing fleet size, landings, and the time vessels spend fishing, as described in the Marine Management Organisation's UK Sea Fisheries Statistics 2022 publication (PDF, 3.5MB).

The physical flow of renewable electricity services increased by 21% between 2021 and 2022. Electricity generated from offshore and onshore wind increased the most, by 27% and 21%, respectively. This is owing to higher average wind speeds and increased load factors, as described in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's (DESNZ's) Digest of UK Energy Statistics Annual data for UK, 2022 release (PDF, 17.4MB). Renewable electricity provisioning produced 99,192 gigawatt hours (GWh) in 2022, nearly five times the 21,899 GWh in 2011. In monetary terms, the annual value of renewable electricity provisioning in 2022 was eight times the value in 2011.

Oil and gas accounted for 69% of the total annual value of the provisioning services in 2022, and agricultural biomass accounted for 16% (Figure 5).

Negative annual values for coal provisioning services are because of low industry profit levels. Deducting user cost of capital as part of the resource rent calculation produces negative natural capital annual values. More information on this is in Section 11: Data sources and quality and in our UK natural capital accounts methodology guide: 2024.

Regulating services help to maintain the quality of the environment we rely on. These include natural processes like air quality, urban heat, greenhouse gas, and noise regulating services. We do not currently provide estimates for flood regulating services.

Vegetation can remove air pollutants from the environment, reducing harm to human health. We produce estimates for ammonia (NH3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), particulate matter 10 (PM10) with particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5) as a subset, and sulphur dioxide (SO2).

Air pollution regulation accounted for 81% of the annual value of regulating services in 2022. Nature removed an estimated 1,384,278 tonnes of pollutants from the air. A full breakdown of value by pollutant type and by local authority area can be found in our accompanying dataset.

Pollution removal by broadleaved woodland habitats contributed the highest percentage of the annual value of air pollution regulating in 2022 at 39%, followed by urban trees at 21% (Figure 6).

The net annual value of greenhouse gas regulating services was estimated to be negative £212 million in 2022 (Table 1). This is largely because the UK is estimated to emit more greenhouse gases than it removes from land use, land use change, and forestry, as explained in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero's National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory 2024 report (PDF, 4.36MB). Peatlands that are in good condition are better at storing and long-term sequestering of greenhouse gases. However, degraded UK peatlands emit more greenhouse gases than they remove, as described in our UK natural capital: peatlands bulletin and in the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology's Peatlands factsheet (PDF, 612KB).

At the subnational level, England and Wales had positive annual values and physical flows, in terms of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent sequestered. Wales sequestered the most greenhouse gases, with an annual value of £239 million in 2022.

Scotland and Northern Ireland had negative values for annual value and physical flows in 2022 (Figure 7). Forests sequester greenhouse gases, while degraded peatlands emit them. Northern Ireland's land area has a larger percentage of peatland (17%) than woodland (9%). In comparison, Wales's land area has 4% peatland and 15% woodland. This contributes to Northern Ireland emitting more greenhouse gases than it captures, while Wales captures more greenhouse gases than it emits. For more information, see our Woodland natural capital accounts, UK: 2024 bulletin and Natural Resources Wales's blogpost about peatland restoration.

The annual value of urban heat regulating in 2022 (£824 million) was almost four times the level in 2021 (£209 million). This is because of an increased number of hot days in 2022; see Section 10: Glossary for how we define hot days.

Cultural services are the non-material benefits we get from interacting with ecosystems through recreation and tourism, and their associated health benefits.

The number of recreation and tourism visits to nature in 2020 was at its highest since 2011 (Figure 8). However, the annual value, or money spent on recreation and tourism, was at its lowest in 2020 (Figure 9). This was likely because of coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic restrictions implemented in that year.

The number of visits to nature fell by 10% between 2020 and 2022, while the amount of money people spent to visit nature increased by 154%. Visits to urban areas have decreased since 2020, while visits to all other habitats increased.

Health benefits from recreation had the highest asset value of ecosystem services in 2022, at £489 billion. There were an estimated 20 million people gaining health benefits from recreation in nature.

Another aspect of cultural services is captured in the value of house prices. This includes both: 

• the value of opportunities for recreation associated with how close people are to green spaces (land) and blue spaces (water), enabling people to effectively make "free trips" to the natural environment
• the aesthetic value of a view of green or blue spaces, also known as visual amenity services

The combined aesthetic and recreation annual value increased by 107% between 2003 and 2022 and is now estimated to be worth £7 billion.

While annual valuations look at flows in a given year, asset values measure the stream of services from, or stock of, a natural resource in terms of the future expected supply and use over a reasonably predictable time horizon.

The total asset value of UK ecosystem services that we can currently value was an estimated £1.8 trillion in 2022 (Table 2). This value should not be considered as a simple indicator of environmental sustainability or ecological health, because it is partly influenced by economic factors like oil and gas prices.

Asset

A natural asset is a resource that can generate goods or services to humans into the future.

Asset valuation estimates the stream of services that are expected to be produced by the natural resource over a reasonably predictable time horizon.

Ecosystem services

Ecosystem services estimate the contribution of natural assets to the economy and society in the UK.

This includes provisioning services such as food and water, regulating services such as flood protection and pollution removal, and cultural services such as recreation.

Physical flow

The physical flow of a natural asset is the measure of its output in units appropriate to the goods or services.

This differs from the annual value and asset value, which measure the monetary value of a natural resource.

Air pollutants

The air pollutants reported on in this account are ammonia (NH3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulphur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3), particulate matter 10 (PM10), and particulate matter 2.5 (PM2.5), which is a subset of PM10.

Hot days

Hot days were calculated as the average number of hot days that were 28 degrees Celsius and above, for specific city regions in Great Britain. For detailed breakdowns see our UK natural capital accounts — detailed summary dataset.

More detailed quality and methodology information on strengths, limitations, appropriate uses, and how the data were created is available in our accompanying UK natural capital accounts methodology guide: 2024.

We use a wide variety of sources to create estimates of UK natural capital.

These accounts have been compiled in line with the guidelines in the United Nations (UN) System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA) Central Framework (PDF, 5.3MB) and the UN SEEA Ecosystem Accounting. These, in turn, relate to the wider framework of the system of national accounts. We have also published our interpretation of the UN guidance used to produce our natural capital accounts in our Principles of UK natural capital accounting methodology.

Official statistics in development

These statistics are labelled as "official statistics in development". Until September 2023, these were called "experimental statistics". Read more about the change in the guide to official statistics in development.

These statistics in development are regularly revised to produce the best statistics possible given available data and methods.