Leinster 'dirtiest' for C02

Figures from cartell.ie on the average C02 emissions per county for used cars throw up some interesting statistics, writes Trish Whelan. The results, based on the national parc of private used cars, show that Dublin gets considerably more C02 emissions on average than any other county in Ireland, significantly over the national average of almost 134g/km. This would be not unexpected as the city would have a much higher density of cars than most other cities and towns.

At the other end of the scale, Leitrim is the 'cleanest' county for private vehicle use.

Leinster is the 'dirtiest' province and Connaught the 'cleanest' province.

Cork, the second largest city in Ireland, is listed in 15th position on the list of 29 registration areas, despite the fact it has the second highest number of vehicles per county.

John Byrne of cartell.ie says he believes this means that more Cork people are aware of buying eco friendly cars and this could be a contributing factor in Cork being so far down the list of dirtiest to cleanest registration areas.

When asked how the calculations were made, he said their sources were the Department of Transport which provided the complete list of C02 emissions by vehicle, as well as their own IT systems which can tell how many used cars there are in each county. This allowed them calculate the average C02 emissions by county.

Nationally, the average C02 per vehicle - of used cars - is 133.9g/km which is the old Band B (now B2).

cartell.ie explains that 4x4 vehicles obviously bring up the levels of C02 'quite significantly' and there are more of these types of vehicles in Dublin and in Meath. He also put it down to lower emissions in fleets since the introduction of the new tax system in 2008 as newer cars are likely to be more C02 efficient.

John Byrne told us that the average age of the fleet in each county will be a follow up survey, likely to come within the next few weeks.

Shown above is the cartell.ie graph of counties from dirtiest to cleanest.