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Britain’s CO2 Emissions Have Fallen to Levels Last Seen in 1890 (2018)

286 points by apsec112 6y ago

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
Carbon intensity has fallen further this year although no doubt it will bounce back when the thing is over. https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/report-2020-q2/detail/headlines-8?_k=8551xp https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/report-2020-q2/deta...
- vixen99 6y ago
  Bounce back up? From where? https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    >From where? From being down by 21% in Q2.
abraxas 6y ago
Not hard to do if you outsource your energy production to Russia and others.
- kaesar14 6y ago
  Why is this downvoted? Even if it’s wrong, can we please post sources as to why it’s wrong?
  - renewiltord 6y ago
    Why don't you post sources as to why it's right first?
  - firebaze 6y ago
    I didn’t downvote, but that’s quite a strong claim which would definitively benefit from at least one supporting source.
  - esperent 6y ago
    Because it doesn't add anything except negativity to the discussion. There's no nuance, no sources, no reason why I should believe it. It's just a short, purely negative retort in the face of positive news.
    - kristopolous 6y ago
      Alright, these calculations aren't done at the point of consumption but instead the point of production. The national based calculations hide the global chain of events and the interconnectedness of their economies through marketplaces. It's a much harder calculation to figure out who's to "blame" for say, the cost of an electronics device that uses a dozen countries to manufacture or say even a food that is sourced in one country, processed in another, packaged in yet another, and then consumed in a fourth... Do we assign everything to the point of consumption? That's not fair either. Distribute it over each? That's what we currently do but it problematically hides the relationship. The British are still consuming textiles, they just aren't domestically manufacturing them. They may even still own the plants, they're just in, likely, Bangladesh which is seeing a ~5% annual CO2 increase. That should matter if those things were made by the demand of British consumers but in our traditional models it doesn't go into Britain's bucket. That makes it an accounting trick with no clear way to resolve it. It would be like graphing the number of backyard burials for a culture that moved from the practice of backyard burials to cemeteries and mistaking it as if they somehow vanquished death and are now eternal except in a few very deadly places. We've moved towards globally centralized manufacturing. There's lots of citations that can be made but the way things work are way different now then say in 1960.
  - p1necone 6y ago
    Verifying every claim you read on the internet is an impossible endeavor. It's much healthier for discourse if strong claims that aren't "general knowledge" for lack of a better term are ignored unless supplied alongside reliable sources or some sort of justification/explanation (and even then, making ridiculous claims and backing them up with heavily biased sources is a common tactic too). This is mostly necessary in politically charged topics (energy generation (because that relates to climate change) and mentioning Russia specifically were both red flags to me) because spurious emotive bullshit and deliberate misinformation are very common. This particular comment also didn't have enough information to be very useful - How much energy does the UK import from Russia? In what form? Has that amount changed recently? Why do you believe this is a bad thing? are all interesting questions the commenter could answer that would add to the conversation in a useful way.
    - ultramundane8 6y ago
      Sadly, "burden of proof" has never gained traction despite its essential nature. I really wish I were intelligent enough to systematize it, but billions of dollars have so far failed to establish procedures for sound reasoning. Or maybe just make those procedures commonplace.
    - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
      This is a really interesting take I have not really thought about. Almost all internet discussions are littered with these one liner bold claims. Are they true? I have no idea but people upvote them anyway because they sound possible and important. Often they are partially true but reducing the topic to one line removes the important details.
  - Zenst 6y ago
    For many reasons - primary would be the confusions of production of electricity and source of fuel to produce aforementioned electricity. Then the actually source of that Gas. "However, in the UK, most of the natural gas imported comes by pipeline from Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. There are no pipelines that allow Russian gas to flow to the UK from Norway (the biggest source of imports)." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43421431 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43421431
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - tobylane 6y ago
    I interpreted it as we (UK) are piped gas from Russia. We aren't, our gas is primarily from the North Sea. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43421431#:~:text=However%2C%20in%20the%20UK%2C%20most,the%20biggest%20source%20of%20imports https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43421431#:~:text=However...). (link jumps to the chart)
- pippy 6y ago
  The large outsourcing of pollution would also be heavy industry.
  - Zenst 6y ago
    Are you saying the UK outsourced all it's heavy industry off-shore to cut-down upon emission locally?
    - ashtonkem 6y ago
      I doubt they're saying that the UK outsourced heavy-industry specifically to reduce on local emissions, but rather that one of the secondary effects of outsourcing heavy industry was to outsource pollution.
      - Zenst 6y ago
        I shared those doubts, hence asked for some clarity to avoid any subtext. Manufacturing is and always has been a complicated one. Until there is some global emissions tax upon products that factor in full material to consumer aspects from production and shipping emission - things will never change and the ability to have a local product cost 2x more than some imported one that has 10x the emission, is still going to play out until there is a true emission tax (not just carbon). Hence the whole emission/environment and humanity impacts of industry has no true global standard and the variance of those standards is a difference that we all end up paying the difference, albeit indirectly.
        C1sc0cat 6y ago
        Could be abused as a non tariff barrier see the chicken tax on light trucks and other ways the us protects its local car industry.
        Zenst 6y ago
        Yet if the whole environmental factor of shipping/transportation and production emission standards are factored in - those cheap imports would become less cheap and negate the need to allow some local production to almost die before noticing that it's unfairly suffering due to it having to comply with a higher level of environmental and worker standards compared to some import. Hence you get workarounds happening like the example you mention about chicken tax - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax workaround that can play both ways, yet if there was a base-level standard and measure to balance things out, then such loopholes become less harder to happen, or needed. Alas the only common standards are weights/measures and currency, everything else does vary. As an aside, I dare say that the history of importing chickens into Europe is more fascinating than most imagined, and one that still plays on even to this day.
- cel1ne 6y ago
  "Where earlier reductions were largely negated by rising imports, the past decade has seen genuine cuts in the amount of CO2 for which the UK is responsible." - https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-38-since-1990 https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-uks-co2-emissio...
- Camas 6y ago
  UK carbon consumption (includes imports) peaked in 2007. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/882939/Consumption_emissions_March_20_v9.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
- ascorbic 6y ago
  This has been achieved not by buying energy from elsewhere (certainly not Russia), but from a reduction in the use of coal-fired power stations to effectively zero. They've been replaced by combined cycle gas turbine (which has far less emissions), biomass (the largest coal-fired power station now burns woodpellets), and a massive increase in offshore wind turbines. Here's the obligatory link to the UK's live electricity sources: https://gridwatch.co.uk/ https://gridwatch.co.uk/
LatteLazy 6y ago
(2017 emissions) (emissions were actually lower in 1928ish) (emissions are still much too high and global emissions Co tinue to rise)
- Zenst 6y ago
  Whilst Co2 emission maybe lowering, it is the other polluting emission that have seen increasing weight placed upon Co2 emission over other forms of emission is a little concerning that they will get overshadowed. https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/reports?section_id=7 https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/reports?section_id=7 A good source for atmospheric(air quality) data.
reizorc 6y ago
Burning trees and other biomass for electricity is not CO2 neutral as much as the UK gov wants it to be. First it produces more CO2 at the stack than coal and then you have to actually replant and wait 40 years.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  It's supposedly waste product from the timber industry but I have my doubts about that.
  - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
    If you do the maths there is not enough UK woodland area for the power they are producing. I cannot find the source at the moment but at least in the UK they are basically importing wood chips from US, Canada, Malaysia, etc. just to keep the existing "bio mass" incinerators burning.
    - pjc50 6y ago
      Yeah, last time I did the numbers it would consume every tree in the UK in six months. It's both greenwashing and better than burning coal.
      - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
        My major issue against it is that these businesses are getting massive amounts of government funding and tax incentives due to the "green" spin. Effectively none of these business are actually profitable and would be insolvent without government help/cronyism. This money is pretty much wasted on these polluting businesses and is money that could be applied elsewhere towards the environment.
    - growlist 6y ago
      Yeah the biomass thing in the UK is an absolute joke - cynical greenwashing. So much of what I hear makes me question whether Oxbridge humanities graduates should be kept far, far away from any decision making involving science: 'James Woodley, an Environmental Biologist and resident of Northampton County, North Carolina, an area severely affected by wood pellet production for Drax’s biomass burning, said: ‘Now that the forests are gone, so is the sense of community. Dust is everywhere, even people are breathing in dust and becoming sick from it. When Enviva [a Drax pellet supplier] moved to our community, and to other poor communities in the Southeastern US, the company promised to bring hope to the hopeless, to reduce poverty, but what they ended up bringing was truckloads of logs, daily, constantly barrelling through.’' https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2019/drax-protest-pr-2/ https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2019/drax-protest-pr-2/
ehmish 6y ago
Good data visualisation of co2 emissions over the last 200 years: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?country=~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?countr...
- totetsu 6y ago
  What's going on in New Caledonia? 19.85 tons? Oh it's a per capita measure.. and a coal plant to power mining operations https://newcaledoniatoday.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/new-caledonia-to-become-the-second-greatest-source-of-co2-emissions/ https://newcaledoniatoday.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/new-caled...
downvoteme1 6y ago
I think the world should also start noting methane emissions . That gas is 400 times more potent than CO2 in trapping heat and is escaping rapidly from fracking sites everywhere . The United States is leading the pack in methane emissions but I think no central agency is tracking that.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  There is effectively no fracking in the UK.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    .. yet. The exploration has so far been met with hostility from locals, but Ineos have been pushing to do it. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/28/ineos-looks-to-us-for-fracking-sites-as-uk-options-wane https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/28/ineos-looks... A personal bugbear though, we should be working much harder to reduce or eliminate flaring: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-51730024 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-5...
shoo 6y ago
This analysis neglects the impact of moving heavy industry offshore -- Britain still benefits from the consumption of industrial products, historically some industrial products consumed domestically may have been manufactured in Britain where CO2 emissions from manufacturing would be counted as British emissions. Now the same products are manufactured in China, perhaps with lower environmental regulation. Both countries share a single atmosphere & so in terms of global warming it is irrelevant in which country the emissions occur. If outsourcing manufacturing without reducing emissions makes British emissions look lower by some metric then that metric is not very useful for thinking about progress in dealing with climate change. The economist podcast [1] touched on this topic recently during an interview with Prof Dieter Helm [2] who has a series of lectures & a new book about this. [1] For the podcast, check out the last 9 minutes of https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/09/08/tech-wreck-the-stockmarket-hits-rough-water https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/09/08/tech-wreck-the... [2] http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/ http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/
- Pfhreak 6y ago
  What's the impact of those manufacturing emissions? Like, did they shift 10% offshore and reduce in other sectors? Or is the reduction in manufacturing the primary needle mover?
  - jack_riminton 6y ago
    Consumption vs production figures here https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption-co2-emissions?year=latest&time=1990..latest&country=~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...
- marius_k 6y ago
  In this link [0] posted by another user we can see that consumption based CO2 emissions is ~556.5 Mtons (2017). In total it is 940Mtons. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?country=~GBR#consumption-based-accounting-how-do-emissions-compare-when-we-adjust-for-trade https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?countr...
frereubu 6y ago
For those understandably cynical about this, and suggesting that it’s solely to do with offshoring emissions to China etc, this BBC economics podcast goes into the detail - a lot of it is actually a real and significant drop caused by the rapid phasing out of coal-fired power stations, which was relatively easy. The next drops are going to be much harder. And, as others have pointed out, it’s still not nearly enough. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0802553 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0802553
- konjin 6y ago
  The only reason why coal fired plants could be phased out is that the base load from industry is gone. For example the UK last month produced 515,000 tons of steel. In the 1890s it produced 420,000 tons per month. The title might as well be "UK De-Industrialization Complete". [1] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmbis/546/54604.htm https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmbi... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/steel-production https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/steel-production
  - frereubu 6y ago
    Fair point, but that's not the only reason. Coal-fired stations have been replaced with gas ones, which aren't ideal, but are clearly better. Renewable energy has increased quite a bit, albeit from a low base and not nearly fast enough. My quibble is that people are entirely writing this off because it's not enough, and I don't think that's helpful. We need to take some satisfaction when things are going in the right direction, even if it's not enough yet. It's like a boss whose only method of motivating people is to constantly point out deficiencies in someone's work, rather than giving balanced feedback and praising them where it's due.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    I'm surprised to see that UK steel production actually peaked in the late 1960s.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
supernova87a 6y ago
oops, sorry.
- nl 6y ago
  This was from 2018...
JoachimS 6y ago
About a third of the per capita emissions in the United States.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
fenk85 6y ago
Well yeh The UK economy has cratered due to COVID [1] and Brexit uncertainty both of which will get worse this winter. [1] https://www.accountancydaily.co/uk-officially-falls-largest-recession-record https://www.accountancydaily.co/uk-officially-falls-largest-... UK government has handled both issues terribly, in both cases making things worse.
borg_ 6y ago
It blows my mind how much higher US/Canada's per-capita CO2 emission is compared to European industrialized countries as well as China [1]. While we lament how much of this is due to offshoring industries to China, it's also a good sign that carbon-importing countries seem to have been trending down over the past 10 years while carbon-exporting country (China) is leveling off in its emission. My naive read would be that we learned to make more efficient use of carbon while off-shoring is happening. All countries need to do much more but SOME really need to wake up and do their part! [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&year=latest&country=GBR~CHN~USA~CAN~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...
- growlist 6y ago
  Shale oil/tar sands really are a truly disgusting and ongoing environmental catastrophe for which there can be no reasonable explanation in 2020, and about which Canadians should be ashamed. If there were any justice in the world Canada would have sanctions applied to it over this years ago.
  - dade_ 6y ago
    Many are, the oil is being produced for the US market where it is refined. In any case, blaming the supplier will never solve the problem, everyone's consumption of fossil fuels is the problem as it drives a high price of oil that funds these projects. Notice US tariffs against Canada for softwood lumber, aluminum, steel, dairy, but NEVER OIL. Makes sense though, the US fund and develop the projects. So the price of oil is the explanation (trillions of dollars), but everything about the tarsands is insane. The CO2 emissions are probably #3. The man who invented the technology was horrified, then he died of cancer. Many dangerous chemicals in the mix are being processed and stored beside major rivers in tailing 'ponds'. The tailing ponds that are actually very large lakes of toxic sludge kill countless birds each year. They installed scarecrows probably 10 years ago. The natural gas (methane) being burned to extract the tar from the sand with heat is the actual emission of CO2. They were thinking about building nuclear power plants to generate heat instead. This would solve the emissions issue that everyone complains about, but then there would be nuclear waste being generated to create bitumen. This seemed a little too crazy and didn't go anywhere. Finally, this bitumen needs to be processed, but it doesn't move in a pipeline. So yet another petroleum product is shipped in from the middle east to dissolve it, so it will flow through pipelines to the US for refining and let's face facts here, consumption. Construction of pipelines, and the ongoing risk of a spill are all added to the list. But people need to commute to their office job and they can't afford to do that if the price of oil is too high, and it is a hedge against a major disruption in production in the middle east which is only a few Iranian nukes away from reality. It's all insane, but the CO2 is just lower on the list.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
Once again, there is some actual, irrefutably good, news greeted by cynicism. This is, after all, the goal we're trying to achieve - reduction in CO2 emissions - isn't it?. It's good news that at least one advanced economy has done this. Can we just take a moment to celebrate some good news, please, folks?
pyetya 6y ago
How much did people spend on it? What benefits it gives?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
code4tee 6y ago
A lot of these numbers are misleading. Things like manufacturing have fled the UK to other countries. This keeps emissions low but the UK still utilizes goods, just made elsewhere. More legit numbers would show the total amount of consumption and trace the emissions back to source, not just look at emissions at source in country. Also these stats only look at emissions and overlook sequestration, which can be huge in some countries. For example, the UK has long since lost most of its forests which means it sequesters a lot less carbon than more forested countries like the United States.
x87678r 6y ago
Here is a quick reminder of what Britain looked like in 1890. It must have had the highest CO2 emissions per citizen by far. https://i1.wp.com/www.cabaltimes.com/wp-content/Manchester_Industrial_Revolution.jpg https://i1.wp.com/www.cabaltimes.com/wp-content/Manchester_I...
bregma 6y ago
1890, a century after Blake's complaint of the dark satanic mills? Is there a significance to that date or is someone using a murky and turgid understanding of history to score some political points?
Proven 6y ago
Tough times in the UK...
matthewfelgate 6y ago
We've outsourced the problem to China.
disown 6y ago
Because they shipped their industrial base overseas where they have much lax environmental regulations than in britain. Unless britain's quality of life sunk to 1890 level, their real contribution is far higher than 1890. After all britain's consumption has increased significantly ( on a per capita basis ) and their population has risen significantly since 1890. So an honest article would say britain's CO2 emissions has risen significantly since 1890. But it's probably just paid PR study with an agenda like almost all of climate related news is. Another PR on the frontpage. "Google says its carbon footprint is now zero" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468892 It's like how parts of europe "recycled" most of their plastic/trash... by shipping it to china. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash-ban-forces-europe-to-confront-its-waste-problem/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash... Just paid PR nonsense. And I can't wait for PR about how great norway is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ... The top 5 oil producer on a per capita basis.
willyt 6y ago
I once read a statistic that the Saturn V rocket had a higher instantaneous power than the whole of the UK electrical grid. I did a bit of googling to discover if that was true and I was surprised to discover that the UK used about 3-4 times more electricity in the 1970's than it does now. Presumably it's because there is hardly any industries like steel milling or metal forming and processing now. Most manufacturing is assembly of parts imported from the EU and the far east.
- philipkglass 6y ago
  The UK consumes more electricity now than in the 1970s. https://www.statista.com/statistics/550592/uk-electricity-consumption-by-final-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/550592/uk-electricity-co... Consumption in 1970: 192 TWh Consumption in 2019: 295 TWh
  - willyt 6y ago
    I don't know who statista are but their figures seem to be wrong. However I also must have misremembered. So it seems we were both wrong: The UK government says it is similar now (256983 GWh) compared to 1970. (214426 GWh) having peaked in 2003 (342308 GWh) https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historical-electricity-data https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historic...

286 points by apsec112 6y ago

Carbon intensity has fallen further this year although no doubt it will bounce back when the thing is over. https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/report-2020-q2/detail/headlines-8?_k=8551xp https://electricinsights.co.uk/#/reports/report-2020-q2/deta...

vixen99 6y ago
Bounce back up? From where? https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  >From where? From being down by 21% in Q2.

abraxas 6y ago

Not hard to do if you outsource your energy production to Russia and others.

kaesar14 6y ago
Why is this downvoted? Even if it’s wrong, can we please post sources as to why it’s wrong?
- renewiltord 6y ago
  Why don't you post sources as to why it's right first?
- firebaze 6y ago
  I didn’t downvote, but that’s quite a strong claim which would definitively benefit from at least one supporting source.
- esperent 6y ago
  Because it doesn't add anything except negativity to the discussion. There's no nuance, no sources, no reason why I should believe it. It's just a short, purely negative retort in the face of positive news.
  - kristopolous 6y ago
    Alright, these calculations aren't done at the point of consumption but instead the point of production. The national based calculations hide the global chain of events and the interconnectedness of their economies through marketplaces. It's a much harder calculation to figure out who's to "blame" for say, the cost of an electronics device that uses a dozen countries to manufacture or say even a food that is sourced in one country, processed in another, packaged in yet another, and then consumed in a fourth... Do we assign everything to the point of consumption? That's not fair either. Distribute it over each? That's what we currently do but it problematically hides the relationship. The British are still consuming textiles, they just aren't domestically manufacturing them. They may even still own the plants, they're just in, likely, Bangladesh which is seeing a ~5% annual CO2 increase. That should matter if those things were made by the demand of British consumers but in our traditional models it doesn't go into Britain's bucket. That makes it an accounting trick with no clear way to resolve it. It would be like graphing the number of backyard burials for a culture that moved from the practice of backyard burials to cemeteries and mistaking it as if they somehow vanquished death and are now eternal except in a few very deadly places. We've moved towards globally centralized manufacturing. There's lots of citations that can be made but the way things work are way different now then say in 1960.
- p1necone 6y ago
  Verifying every claim you read on the internet is an impossible endeavor. It's much healthier for discourse if strong claims that aren't "general knowledge" for lack of a better term are ignored unless supplied alongside reliable sources or some sort of justification/explanation (and even then, making ridiculous claims and backing them up with heavily biased sources is a common tactic too). This is mostly necessary in politically charged topics (energy generation (because that relates to climate change) and mentioning Russia specifically were both red flags to me) because spurious emotive bullshit and deliberate misinformation are very common. This particular comment also didn't have enough information to be very useful - How much energy does the UK import from Russia? In what form? Has that amount changed recently? Why do you believe this is a bad thing? are all interesting questions the commenter could answer that would add to the conversation in a useful way.
  - ultramundane8 6y ago
    Sadly, "burden of proof" has never gained traction despite its essential nature. I really wish I were intelligent enough to systematize it, but billions of dollars have so far failed to establish procedures for sound reasoning. Or maybe just make those procedures commonplace.
  - Polylactic_acid 6y ago
    This is a really interesting take I have not really thought about. Almost all internet discussions are littered with these one liner bold claims. Are they true? I have no idea but people upvote them anyway because they sound possible and important. Often they are partially true but reducing the topic to one line removes the important details.
- Zenst 6y ago
  For many reasons - primary would be the confusions of production of electricity and source of fuel to produce aforementioned electricity. Then the actually source of that Gas. "However, in the UK, most of the natural gas imported comes by pipeline from Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. There are no pipelines that allow Russian gas to flow to the UK from Norway (the biggest source of imports)." https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43421431 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43421431
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tobylane 6y ago
  I interpreted it as we (UK) are piped gas from Russia. We aren't, our gas is primarily from the North Sea. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43421431#:~:text=However%2C%20in%20the%20UK%2C%20most,the%20biggest%20source%20of%20imports https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43421431#:~:text=However...). (link jumps to the chart)
pippy 6y ago
The large outsourcing of pollution would also be heavy industry.
- Zenst 6y ago
  Are you saying the UK outsourced all it's heavy industry off-shore to cut-down upon emission locally?
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I doubt they're saying that the UK outsourced heavy-industry specifically to reduce on local emissions, but rather that one of the secondary effects of outsourcing heavy industry was to outsource pollution.
    - Zenst 6y ago
      I shared those doubts, hence asked for some clarity to avoid any subtext. Manufacturing is and always has been a complicated one. Until there is some global emissions tax upon products that factor in full material to consumer aspects from production and shipping emission - things will never change and the ability to have a local product cost 2x more than some imported one that has 10x the emission, is still going to play out until there is a true emission tax (not just carbon). Hence the whole emission/environment and humanity impacts of industry has no true global standard and the variance of those standards is a difference that we all end up paying the difference, albeit indirectly.
      - C1sc0cat 6y ago
        Could be abused as a non tariff barrier see the chicken tax on light trucks and other ways the us protects its local car industry.
        Zenst 6y ago
        Yet if the whole environmental factor of shipping/transportation and production emission standards are factored in - those cheap imports would become less cheap and negate the need to allow some local production to almost die before noticing that it's unfairly suffering due to it having to comply with a higher level of environmental and worker standards compared to some import. Hence you get workarounds happening like the example you mention about chicken tax - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax workaround that can play both ways, yet if there was a base-level standard and measure to balance things out, then such loopholes become less harder to happen, or needed. Alas the only common standards are weights/measures and currency, everything else does vary. As an aside, I dare say that the history of importing chickens into Europe is more fascinating than most imagined, and one that still plays on even to this day.
cel1ne 6y ago
"Where earlier reductions were largely negated by rising imports, the past decade has seen genuine cuts in the amount of CO2 for which the UK is responsible." - https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-uks-co2-emissions-have-fallen-38-since-1990 https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-why-the-uks-co2-emissio...
Camas 6y ago
UK carbon consumption (includes imports) peaked in 2007. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/882939/Consumption_emissions_March_20_v9.pdf https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
ascorbic 6y ago
This has been achieved not by buying energy from elsewhere (certainly not Russia), but from a reduction in the use of coal-fired power stations to effectively zero. They've been replaced by combined cycle gas turbine (which has far less emissions), biomass (the largest coal-fired power station now burns woodpellets), and a massive increase in offshore wind turbines. Here's the obligatory link to the UK's live electricity sources: https://gridwatch.co.uk/ https://gridwatch.co.uk/

LatteLazy 6y ago

(2017 emissions) (emissions were actually lower in 1928ish) (emissions are still much too high and global emissions Co tinue to rise)

Zenst 6y ago
Whilst Co2 emission maybe lowering, it is the other polluting emission that have seen increasing weight placed upon Co2 emission over other forms of emission is a little concerning that they will get overshadowed. https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/reports?section_id=7 https://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/reports?section_id=7 A good source for atmospheric(air quality) data.

reizorc 6y ago

Burning trees and other biomass for electricity is not CO2 neutral as much as the UK gov wants it to be. First it produces more CO2 at the stack than coal and then you have to actually replant and wait 40 years.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
It's supposedly waste product from the timber industry but I have my doubts about that.
- DoingIsLearning 6y ago
  If you do the maths there is not enough UK woodland area for the power they are producing. I cannot find the source at the moment but at least in the UK they are basically importing wood chips from US, Canada, Malaysia, etc. just to keep the existing "bio mass" incinerators burning.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Yeah, last time I did the numbers it would consume every tree in the UK in six months. It's both greenwashing and better than burning coal.
    - DoingIsLearning 6y ago
      My major issue against it is that these businesses are getting massive amounts of government funding and tax incentives due to the "green" spin. Effectively none of these business are actually profitable and would be insolvent without government help/cronyism. This money is pretty much wasted on these polluting businesses and is money that could be applied elsewhere towards the environment.
  - growlist 6y ago
    Yeah the biomass thing in the UK is an absolute joke - cynical greenwashing. So much of what I hear makes me question whether Oxbridge humanities graduates should be kept far, far away from any decision making involving science: 'James Woodley, an Environmental Biologist and resident of Northampton County, North Carolina, an area severely affected by wood pellet production for Drax’s biomass burning, said: ‘Now that the forests are gone, so is the sense of community. Dust is everywhere, even people are breathing in dust and becoming sick from it. When Enviva [a Drax pellet supplier] moved to our community, and to other poor communities in the Southeastern US, the company promised to bring hope to the hopeless, to reduce poverty, but what they ended up bringing was truckloads of logs, daily, constantly barrelling through.’' https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2019/drax-protest-pr-2/ https://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2019/drax-protest-pr-2/

ehmish 6y ago

Good data visualisation of co2 emissions over the last 200 years: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?country=~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?countr...

totetsu 6y ago
What's going on in New Caledonia? 19.85 tons? Oh it's a per capita measure.. and a coal plant to power mining operations https://newcaledoniatoday.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/new-caledonia-to-become-the-second-greatest-source-of-co2-emissions/ https://newcaledoniatoday.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/new-caled...

downvoteme1 6y ago

I think the world should also start noting methane emissions . That gas is 400 times more potent than CO2 in trapping heat and is escaping rapidly from fracking sites everywhere . The United States is leading the pack in methane emissions but I think no central agency is tracking that.

tonyedgecombe 6y ago
There is effectively no fracking in the UK.
- pjc50 6y ago
  .. yet. The exploration has so far been met with hostility from locals, but Ineos have been pushing to do it. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/28/ineos-looks-to-us-for-fracking-sites-as-uk-options-wane https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/28/ineos-looks... A personal bugbear though, we should be working much harder to reduce or eliminate flaring: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-51730024 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-5...

shoo 6y ago

This analysis neglects the impact of moving heavy industry offshore -- Britain still benefits from the consumption of industrial products, historically some industrial products consumed domestically may have been manufactured in Britain where CO2 emissions from manufacturing would be counted as British emissions. Now the same products are manufactured in China, perhaps with lower environmental regulation. Both countries share a single atmosphere & so in terms of global warming it is irrelevant in which country the emissions occur. If outsourcing manufacturing without reducing emissions makes British emissions look lower by some metric then that metric is not very useful for thinking about progress in dealing with climate change. The economist podcast [1] touched on this topic recently during an interview with Prof Dieter Helm [2] who has a series of lectures & a new book about this. [1] For the podcast, check out the last 9 minutes of https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/09/08/tech-wreck-the-stockmarket-hits-rough-water https://www.economist.com/podcasts/2020/09/08/tech-wreck-the... [2] http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/ http://www.dieterhelm.co.uk/

Pfhreak 6y ago
What's the impact of those manufacturing emissions? Like, did they shift 10% offshore and reduce in other sectors? Or is the reduction in manufacturing the primary needle mover?
- jack_riminton 6y ago
  Consumption vs production figures here https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption-co2-emissions?year=latest&time=1990..latest&country=~GBR https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/production-vs-consumption...
marius_k 6y ago
In this link [0] posted by another user we can see that consumption based CO2 emissions is ~556.5 Mtons (2017). In total it is 940Mtons. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?country=~GBR#consumption-based-accounting-how-do-emissions-compare-when-we-adjust-for-trade https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/united-kingdom?countr...

frereubu 6y ago

For those understandably cynical about this, and suggesting that it’s solely to do with offshoring emissions to China etc, this BBC economics podcast goes into the detail - a lot of it is actually a real and significant drop caused by the rapid phasing out of coal-fired power stations, which was relatively easy. The next drops are going to be much harder. And, as others have pointed out, it’s still not nearly enough. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0802553 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0802553

konjin 6y ago
The only reason why coal fired plants could be phased out is that the base load from industry is gone. For example the UK last month produced 515,000 tons of steel. In the 1890s it produced 420,000 tons per month. The title might as well be "UK De-Industrialization Complete". [1] https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmbis/546/54604.htm https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201516/cmselect/cmbi... [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/steel-production https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/steel-production
- frereubu 6y ago
  Fair point, but that's not the only reason. Coal-fired stations have been replaced with gas ones, which aren't ideal, but are clearly better. Renewable energy has increased quite a bit, albeit from a low base and not nearly fast enough. My quibble is that people are entirely writing this off because it's not enough, and I don't think that's helpful. We need to take some satisfaction when things are going in the right direction, even if it's not enough yet. It's like a boss whose only method of motivating people is to constantly point out deficiencies in someone's work, rather than giving balanced feedback and praising them where it's due.
- arethuza 6y ago
  I'm surprised to see that UK steel production actually peaked in the late 1960s.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago

supernova87a 6y ago

oops, sorry.

nl 6y ago
This was from 2018...

JoachimS 6y ago

About a third of the per capita emissions in the United States.

deleted 6y ago

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fenk85 6y ago

Well yeh The UK economy has cratered due to COVID [1] and Brexit uncertainty both of which will get worse this winter. [1] https://www.accountancydaily.co/uk-officially-falls-largest-recession-record https://www.accountancydaily.co/uk-officially-falls-largest-... UK government has handled both issues terribly, in both cases making things worse.

borg_ 6y ago

It blows my mind how much higher US/Canada's per-capita CO2 emission is compared to European industrialized countries as well as China [1]. While we lament how much of this is due to offshoring industries to China, it's also a good sign that carbon-importing countries seem to have been trending down over the past 10 years while carbon-exporting country (China) is leveling off in its emission. My naive read would be that we learned to make more efficient use of carbon while off-shoring is happening. All countries need to do much more but SOME really need to wake up and do their part! [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?tab=chart&year=latest&country=GBR~CHN~USA~CAN~FRA https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita?t...

growlist 6y ago
Shale oil/tar sands really are a truly disgusting and ongoing environmental catastrophe for which there can be no reasonable explanation in 2020, and about which Canadians should be ashamed. If there were any justice in the world Canada would have sanctions applied to it over this years ago.
- dade_ 6y ago
  Many are, the oil is being produced for the US market where it is refined. In any case, blaming the supplier will never solve the problem, everyone's consumption of fossil fuels is the problem as it drives a high price of oil that funds these projects. Notice US tariffs against Canada for softwood lumber, aluminum, steel, dairy, but NEVER OIL. Makes sense though, the US fund and develop the projects. So the price of oil is the explanation (trillions of dollars), but everything about the tarsands is insane. The CO2 emissions are probably #3. The man who invented the technology was horrified, then he died of cancer. Many dangerous chemicals in the mix are being processed and stored beside major rivers in tailing 'ponds'. The tailing ponds that are actually very large lakes of toxic sludge kill countless birds each year. They installed scarecrows probably 10 years ago. The natural gas (methane) being burned to extract the tar from the sand with heat is the actual emission of CO2. They were thinking about building nuclear power plants to generate heat instead. This would solve the emissions issue that everyone complains about, but then there would be nuclear waste being generated to create bitumen. This seemed a little too crazy and didn't go anywhere. Finally, this bitumen needs to be processed, but it doesn't move in a pipeline. So yet another petroleum product is shipped in from the middle east to dissolve it, so it will flow through pipelines to the US for refining and let's face facts here, consumption. Construction of pipelines, and the ongoing risk of a spill are all added to the list. But people need to commute to their office job and they can't afford to do that if the price of oil is too high, and it is a hedge against a major disruption in production in the middle east which is only a few Iranian nukes away from reality. It's all insane, but the CO2 is just lower on the list.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

Once again, there is some actual, irrefutably good, news greeted by cynicism. This is, after all, the goal we're trying to achieve - reduction in CO2 emissions - isn't it?. It's good news that at least one advanced economy has done this. Can we just take a moment to celebrate some good news, please, folks?

pyetya 6y ago

How much did people spend on it? What benefits it gives?

deleted 6y ago

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code4tee 6y ago

A lot of these numbers are misleading. Things like manufacturing have fled the UK to other countries. This keeps emissions low but the UK still utilizes goods, just made elsewhere. More legit numbers would show the total amount of consumption and trace the emissions back to source, not just look at emissions at source in country. Also these stats only look at emissions and overlook sequestration, which can be huge in some countries. For example, the UK has long since lost most of its forests which means it sequesters a lot less carbon than more forested countries like the United States.

x87678r 6y ago

Here is a quick reminder of what Britain looked like in 1890. It must have had the highest CO2 emissions per citizen by far. https://i1.wp.com/www.cabaltimes.com/wp-content/Manchester_Industrial_Revolution.jpg https://i1.wp.com/www.cabaltimes.com/wp-content/Manchester_I...

bregma 6y ago

1890, a century after Blake's complaint of the dark satanic mills? Is there a significance to that date or is someone using a murky and turgid understanding of history to score some political points?

Proven 6y ago

Tough times in the UK...

matthewfelgate 6y ago

We've outsourced the problem to China.

disown 6y ago

Because they shipped their industrial base overseas where they have much lax environmental regulations than in britain. Unless britain's quality of life sunk to 1890 level, their real contribution is far higher than 1890. After all britain's consumption has increased significantly ( on a per capita basis ) and their population has risen significantly since 1890. So an honest article would say britain's CO2 emissions has risen significantly since 1890. But it's probably just paid PR study with an agenda like almost all of climate related news is. Another PR on the frontpage. "Google says its carbon footprint is now zero" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468892 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24468892 It's like how parts of europe "recycled" most of their plastic/trash... by shipping it to china. https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash-ban-forces-europe-to-confront-its-waste-problem/ https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-recycling-china-trash... Just paid PR nonsense. And I can't wait for PR about how great norway is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_production https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ... The top 5 oil producer on a per capita basis.

willyt 6y ago

I once read a statistic that the Saturn V rocket had a higher instantaneous power than the whole of the UK electrical grid. I did a bit of googling to discover if that was true and I was surprised to discover that the UK used about 3-4 times more electricity in the 1970's than it does now. Presumably it's because there is hardly any industries like steel milling or metal forming and processing now. Most manufacturing is assembly of parts imported from the EU and the far east.

philipkglass 6y ago
The UK consumes more electricity now than in the 1970s. https://www.statista.com/statistics/550592/uk-electricity-consumption-by-final-users/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/550592/uk-electricity-co... Consumption in 1970: 192 TWh Consumption in 2019: 295 TWh
- willyt 6y ago
  I don't know who statista are but their figures seem to be wrong. However I also must have misremembered. So it seems we were both wrong: The UK government says it is similar now (256983 GWh) compared to 1970. (214426 GWh) having peaked in 2003 (342308 GWh) https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historical-electricity-data https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/historic...