The dramatic fall in the UK's greenhouse gas emissions caused by the recession has proved to be a blip, with national emissions rising 3.1% in 2010. The new energy and climate change secretary, Ed Davey, attributed the rise, the first in almost a decade, to increased home heating during a cold winter and shutdowns at nuclear power stations after technical problems.

"One year won't knock the UK off meeting its long-term emission reduction targets, but it serves to underline the importance of the coalition's policies for insulating homes to cut bills and emissions and moving to greener alternative forms of energy," said Davey, a Liberal Democrat who took over from Chris Huhne, who resigned on Friday after being charged over an alleged attempt to avoid prosecution for a speeding offence.

On Sunday, a letter to the prime minister from over 100 Tory MPs was made public, which advocated cutting subsidies to renewable energy, despite renewable energy's role in reducing emissions. But environmental groups see the rise in emissions last year as a warning and said the sharp jump in home heating emissions showed the government had to increase the ambition of its home insulation plans, dubbed the "green deal". "This was meant to be the decade when we slashed our emissions and sparked a green jobs bonanza, but instead we're seeing progress stalling," said Louise Hutchins from Greenpeace. "The fact that rise is partly down to the cold snap in 2010 is no excuse, after all Sweden has colder winters but their bills are lower because they have better insulated homes. To copy their success the government's flagship green deal will need more resources, and that requires greater political ambition."

Keith Allott, head of climate change at WWF-UK, said: "If the government ever needed a wake-up call on greenhouse gas emissions here it is.

"It is alarming to see emissions from homes rising when people are struggling to pay their energy bills. The UK's overreliance on gas has pushed up emissions along with people's energy bills. It's a clear sign that the government needs to back investors in renewable energy and get us off the fossil fuel hook once and for all."

The UK's carbon dioxide emissions, which are the tenth largest of any nation in the world, have been falling over the past 20 years as power stations used less coal and more gas to generate power. The rise in 2010, of 18m tonnes of carbon dioxide, follows a steep year-on-year fall of 8.7% in 2009 when the financial crisis hit as economic activity.

The department of energy and climate change statistic, published on Tuesday, showed 11.8m tonnes of carbon dioxide came from the increased heating of homes, mainly by gas. Problems with the country's biggest reactor Sizewell B reactor in Suffolk, which meant it was shut down for six months in 2010, led to more coal and gas being burned. That added 5.6m tonnes to the UK's emissions of climate-warming gases. Other sectors, including business, agriculture and transport, remained all but unchanged.

Despite the rise, the UK's emissions are about 23% lower than in 1990, the benchmark year for the nation's international commitments to tackle global warming under the Kyoto protocol, meaning the current Kyoto pledge has been comfortably met. A legally binding domestic target of cutting emissions 35% by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, also remains likely to be met. However, since 1990 manufacturing taking place in the UK has fallen sharply and goods imported from elsewhere have filled the gap. When the emissions linked to those imported goods are included, the UK's national carbon footprint has risen by 20%, though critics argue that the exporting country, which benefits from the employment, rightfully is responsible for these emissions.

The Nasa climate scientist James Hansen has calculated that, in order to keep the global temperature rise within the 2C limit accepted by the world's nations, industrialised countries would have to cut their emissions by 6% a year from 2013 onwards. Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation said: "The market set up to give incentives to cut carbon is not delivering in anything like the speed or scale necessary. The UK's 3% rise is so wrong, it takes the breath away."

Historically, greenhouse gas emissions have move in lock-step with GDP, as higher economic activity uses more energy, which generates more emissions. The Stern review in 2006 of the economics of climate change calculated that a 1% change in GDP brings a 0.9% change in emissions. However, the 2010 data for the UK shows that the 3.1% in carbon emissions occurred with just 2.1% of GDP growth.

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