9 ms·

This analysis neglects the impact of moving heavy industry offshore -- Britain still benefits from the consumption of industrial products, historically some ind

by 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...
- penteract 6y ago
  Does adding them together double count CO2 emitted for goods produced and consumed in the UK?
perfunctory 6y ago
Moving industry offshore not only simply moved emissions around, it made things worse by adding aviation and shipping. And to make things even worse, emissions from aviation and shipping are not attributed to any specific country. Talk about creative accounting.
- paranoidrobot 6y ago
  Moving things offshore can in some cases result in lower emissions. For instance, it can be that the UK buying produce from warmer countries is lower emissions in total, because to grow much of it in the UK would require heated+lit greenhouses.
  - CaptArmchair 6y ago
    This may sound good, but it's only meaningful if you'd put that into a larger context. For instance, tomatoes: "Our results show that imported tomatoes from Spain and Italy have two times lower greenhouse gas emissions than those produced in Austria in capital-intensive heated systems. On the contrary, tomatoes from Spain and Italy were found to have 3.7 to 4.7 times higher greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to less-intensive organic production systems in Austria. Therefore, greenhouse gas emissions from tomato production highly depend on the production system such as the prevalence or absence of heating." [1] [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-013-0171-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-013-0171-8 It's the second part that it's important here. It doesn't really matter where tomatoes are grown: Italy, Spain or Austria. In absolute terms, tomatoes production still results in far more carbon emissions then less-intensive produce. Moreover, you have to compound those emission numbers with consumption numbers. Tomatoes are a basically a staple food in the Western world. Massive amounts are produced and consumed. This is why the consumer price per unit is basically pennies at the counter. The offset of that is, in absolute terms, a massive carbon footprint. If hundreds of thousands of tons of tomatoes are shipped by airplane or freightship across the world anually, that still translates into big emissions. In order to reduce carbon emissions in a meaningful way, the entire life cycle of the product in your shopping bag should be weaned off fossil fuel use in an absolute terms. This isn't an easy exercise: "The results show that the largest reduction of environmental impacts can be achieved by consuming seasonal fruits and vegetables, followed by reduction of transport by airplane. Sourcing fruits and vegetables locally is only a good strategy to reduce the carbon footprint if no greenhouse heating with fossil fuels is involved. The impact of water consumption depends on the location of agricultural production. For some crops a trade-off between the carbon footprint and the induced water stress is observed." [2] [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394405/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394405/
bjoli 6y ago
This has been going on for at least 20 yeara. Countries move heavy industry to other countries and then point fingers at them for not lowering their emissions. The stupidity is astounding.
- silon42 6y ago
  Another case: plastic (non) recycling.
- zo1 6y ago
  The tighter that regulations squeeze on free-enterprise, the more free-enterprise "fights back" by doing stuff like this. It's the path of least-resistance and the most-profit so of course it'll get exploited.
  - Guthur 6y ago
    Nonsense, there is no magic in whether it's free enterprise or government led. At this stage I'm amazed that anyone still believes that national control means universally better outcomes, considering the historical record of such government led activity. What we have here is Goodhart's law in full effect, and it'll happen irrespective of who leds it.
- parineum 6y ago
  > This has been going on for at least 20 year[s] Waaaaaaaay longer than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade#/media/File:Droits_de_douane_(France,_UK,_US).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade#/media/File:Droits_... This is all enabled by free trade and globalization. This is where all those good manufacturing jobs in Detroit/Pittsburgh went.
  - Lammy 6y ago
    > This is where all those good manufacturing jobs in Detroit/Pittsburgh went. And then when we look at some demographic information the "why" becomes a lot more clear: - https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymichigan/PST045219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymich... - https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/philadelphiacountypennsylvania https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/philadelphiacountypennsylv...
C1sc0cat 6y ago
Ignores the fact that the UK has closed all its coal fired PowerStation's
- VBprogrammer 6y ago
  Closed is a very strong word. Some have been mothballed or are installing biomass firing capacity but they are still available at short notice.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    Quite a lot of them have actually been demolished. Drax, the big one, did switch to biomass. Coal consumption on the UK grid is now zero most of the time.
    - arethuza 6y ago
      Cockenzie power station near Edinburgh has pretty much completely gone and the huge Longannet plant is in the process of being demolished.
steeve 6y ago
This comment. UK's CO2 _emissions_ may have fallen to 1890's levels, but CO2 _consumption_ hasn't: 89% of 1990 levels according to [1]. Let's not pat ourselves on the back and pretend the problem is solved. 1. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-importers-exporters https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...
- labawi 6y ago
  Considering there is actual CO₂ consumption (oceans, plants, rocks weathering, synthetic fuel?..), using the full term from the article seems appropriate - consumption emissions. If consumption emissions really decreased 11% from 1990 -> 2014, that's quite an achievement. Even though we need 10x that.
darawk 6y ago
I think your point is important to understand, but I think it's kind of missing the point of measuring emissions by country. Exporting manufacturing, etc certainly does not solve the problem. But that's in part because no one country can solve the problem. Any one country that regulates carbon emissions will simply export their emitting industries to foreign countries that do not. What that means is that we have to keep playing whack a mole, until everyone is in compliance. That is, unfortunately, probably just the nature of the problem. We could try to do complex things like apply tariffs to imported goods based on their carbon footprint, but reliably measuring that is going to be next to impossible. So I don't want to disagree with you per se, I think it's important to recognize that exporting industries is not, per se, solving climate change. But I thin it's also important to recognize that solving climate change, in the early stages, probably does look a lot like just reshuffling things by country.
ZeroGravitas 6y ago
This has been studied and it doesn't actually change the big picture much. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-importers-exporters https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import... US up 6%, China down 10% for example. But, yes, to accurately track responsibility this adjustment should be made or else unethical people will have an incentive to shift production to lax regimes. One mildly surprising aspect is that countries that export fossil fuels show up here, even if you count the burning on the importer side. This is because the drilling and mining has carbon impacts on top of the burning.
- pldr1234 6y ago
  That seems highly inaccurate.
IvanK_net 6y ago
There are also many products manufactured in the UK and exported to China, which are not counted as chinese CO2 emissions. And I don't mean just expensive cars like Bentley, Land Rover or Jaguar. British industry is quite huge. E.g. all airplanes used in China were manufactured in Europe or the US, so you could say "China is outsourcing their industry to Europe and the US to keep their CO2 emissions low".
kitd 6y ago
You're undoubtedly correct, but the situation is extremely nuanced. I found the conclusion from this article [1] very interesting Territorial emissions accounting might not be perfect, Mabey says, but in terms of simplicity it is the more practical approach. Lord Deben, chair of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, told the BBC the UK only has direct control over its home-grown emissions, whereas manufacturing methods and energy choices in China are outside our control. Barrett says consumption accounting brings additional information to the table, but agrees there’s no need to abandon territorial accounting methods. Instead, he says consumption emissions highlight how hard it is to decouple emissions from economic growth. That’s why many commentators were so surprised that carbon emissions stalled in 2014, even as the global economy expanded. For a good chance of limiting warming to below two degrees, the challenge of decoupling emissions from growth will have to be cracked. Countries control what they can measure, which is where we are currently. However, fixing climate change requires a completely coherent and coordinated global response, which will have hugely implications for economic growth. Essentially, our economic & political models won't allow us to apply the fix we really need. Without that, we are left with countries trying to do the best they can individually. [1] - https://www.carbonbrief.org/are-the-uks-emissions-really-falling-or-has-it-outsourced-them-to-china https://www.carbonbrief.org/are-the-uks-emissions-really-fal...
zajio1am 6y ago
> 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. It is not that products from China are shippped to UK without any countervalue in opposite direction. If UK lowers its per-dollar emissions and other countries not, then UK necessarily imports more 'dirtier' products, but exports 'cleaner'. If you account it by production, then you see UK is cleaner and other countries not, if you account it by consumption, then you see all countries are a bit cleaner (based on how they consume UK goods). Accounting by production makes more sense as governments have much more control about production in their countries.
mc32 6y ago
So will they in turn normalize the historical output as well if some of it was exported and consumed elsewhere and assign it to where it was consumed? I mean if you do it one way, you have to do it the other way too.
plq 6y ago
So can we say that now that the heavy industry has been moved offshore, lowering CO2 emissions won't make as much of an impact on local British jobs? If so the next step should be to analyze the CO2 footprint of the country and start taking steps in reducing that number instead. Eg. banning ICE vehicles would help big time I guess.
thinkcontext 6y ago
This is a good argument for a carbon border tax. But in general I think you are overstating the impact of CO2 emissions policy on UK deindustrialization. That process began well before any CO2 policies were in place, with labor costs and scale being far larger factors.
christkv 6y ago
I've always argued this point that it would have been better if production had stayed in the west as it would have been cleaner by now than what happens in China.
glitchc 6y ago
What a terrible comment for such a positive development. It completely ignores UK's massive efforts in switching away from coal-fired plants to other alternatives, such a huge undertaking. For reference: The current population in the UK is an estimated 66 million. The population in 1890 was 10 million. Therefore the current energy infrastructure supports 6x the population at the same carbon emissions rate. That's an amazing achievement and doesn't even take into consideration how much more electricity-dependent the average 2019 UKer is compared to the 1890 UKer. So what if China produces goods in a dirty manner? How is this the UK's problem? This is a classic case of moving the goalposts. The UK has achieved carbon emission reductions without negatively impacting the standard of living, but of course that is not sufficient for the climate activists, is it, as it is the modern standard of living that they truly have an issue with. Perhaps the climate activitists don't realize is that most of the population doesn't want to live "one with nature", and we are extremely loath to give up the creature comforts of modern urban living. Much of climate moralizing nowadays reminds me of the Temperance League at the turn of the century.
- bitdizzy 6y ago
  If the standard of living in the UK depends on imports from countries that heavily emit CO2's, then in what sense has the UK achieved a modern standard of living at a low rate of CO2 emissions? How did you turn a comment on method of accounting into a screed against "modern standard of living" and for living "one with nature"?
  - glitchc 6y ago
    Let me turn that question around: Is the UK supposed to turn away from global trade and become an isolated, self-sufficient nation just to meet its climate commitments? Do you require that of every nation on the planet? Or should the UK impose its policies and laws on other nations? Do you prefer that model?
    - bobthepanda 6y ago
      Carbon taxes on both domestic products and imported ones, and rebating consumers a fixed amount per person would be a good start.

by shoo 6y ago

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...

penteract 6y ago
Does adding them together double count CO2 emitted for goods produced and consumed in the UK?

perfunctory 6y ago

Moving industry offshore not only simply moved emissions around, it made things worse by adding aviation and shipping. And to make things even worse, emissions from aviation and shipping are not attributed to any specific country. Talk about creative accounting.

paranoidrobot 6y ago
Moving things offshore can in some cases result in lower emissions. For instance, it can be that the UK buying produce from warmer countries is lower emissions in total, because to grow much of it in the UK would require heated+lit greenhouses.
- CaptArmchair 6y ago
  This may sound good, but it's only meaningful if you'd put that into a larger context. For instance, tomatoes: "Our results show that imported tomatoes from Spain and Italy have two times lower greenhouse gas emissions than those produced in Austria in capital-intensive heated systems. On the contrary, tomatoes from Spain and Italy were found to have 3.7 to 4.7 times higher greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to less-intensive organic production systems in Austria. Therefore, greenhouse gas emissions from tomato production highly depend on the production system such as the prevalence or absence of heating." [1] [1] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-013-0171-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13593-013-0171-8 It's the second part that it's important here. It doesn't really matter where tomatoes are grown: Italy, Spain or Austria. In absolute terms, tomatoes production still results in far more carbon emissions then less-intensive produce. Moreover, you have to compound those emission numbers with consumption numbers. Tomatoes are a basically a staple food in the Western world. Massive amounts are produced and consumed. This is why the consumer price per unit is basically pennies at the counter. The offset of that is, in absolute terms, a massive carbon footprint. If hundreds of thousands of tons of tomatoes are shipped by airplane or freightship across the world anually, that still translates into big emissions. In order to reduce carbon emissions in a meaningful way, the entire life cycle of the product in your shopping bag should be weaned off fossil fuel use in an absolute terms. This isn't an easy exercise: "The results show that the largest reduction of environmental impacts can be achieved by consuming seasonal fruits and vegetables, followed by reduction of transport by airplane. Sourcing fruits and vegetables locally is only a good strategy to reduce the carbon footprint if no greenhouse heating with fossil fuels is involved. The impact of water consumption depends on the location of agricultural production. For some crops a trade-off between the carbon footprint and the induced water stress is observed." [2] [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394405/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394405/

bjoli 6y ago

This has been going on for at least 20 yeara. Countries move heavy industry to other countries and then point fingers at them for not lowering their emissions. The stupidity is astounding.

silon42 6y ago
Another case: plastic (non) recycling.
zo1 6y ago
The tighter that regulations squeeze on free-enterprise, the more free-enterprise "fights back" by doing stuff like this. It's the path of least-resistance and the most-profit so of course it'll get exploited.
- Guthur 6y ago
  Nonsense, there is no magic in whether it's free enterprise or government led. At this stage I'm amazed that anyone still believes that national control means universally better outcomes, considering the historical record of such government led activity. What we have here is Goodhart's law in full effect, and it'll happen irrespective of who leds it.
parineum 6y ago
> This has been going on for at least 20 year[s] Waaaaaaaay longer than that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade#/media/File:Droits_de_douane_(France,_UK,_US).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_trade#/media/File:Droits_... This is all enabled by free trade and globalization. This is where all those good manufacturing jobs in Detroit/Pittsburgh went.
- Lammy 6y ago
  > This is where all those good manufacturing jobs in Detroit/Pittsburgh went. And then when we look at some demographic information the "why" becomes a lot more clear: - https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymichigan/PST045219 https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/detroitcitymich... - https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/philadelphiacountypennsylvania https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/philadelphiacountypennsylv...

C1sc0cat 6y ago

Ignores the fact that the UK has closed all its coal fired PowerStation's

VBprogrammer 6y ago
Closed is a very strong word. Some have been mothballed or are installing biomass firing capacity but they are still available at short notice.
- pjc50 6y ago
  Quite a lot of them have actually been demolished. Drax, the big one, did switch to biomass. Coal consumption on the UK grid is now zero most of the time.
  - arethuza 6y ago
    Cockenzie power station near Edinburgh has pretty much completely gone and the huge Longannet plant is in the process of being demolished.

steeve 6y ago

This comment. UK's CO2 _emissions_ may have fallen to 1890's levels, but CO2 _consumption_ hasn't: 89% of 1990 levels according to [1]. Let's not pat ourselves on the back and pretend the problem is solved. 1. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-importers-exporters https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import...

labawi 6y ago
Considering there is actual CO₂ consumption (oceans, plants, rocks weathering, synthetic fuel?..), using the full term from the article seems appropriate - consumption emissions. If consumption emissions really decreased 11% from 1990 -> 2014, that's quite an achievement. Even though we need 10x that.

darawk 6y ago

I think your point is important to understand, but I think it's kind of missing the point of measuring emissions by country. Exporting manufacturing, etc certainly does not solve the problem. But that's in part because no one country can solve the problem. Any one country that regulates carbon emissions will simply export their emitting industries to foreign countries that do not. What that means is that we have to keep playing whack a mole, until everyone is in compliance. That is, unfortunately, probably just the nature of the problem. We could try to do complex things like apply tariffs to imported goods based on their carbon footprint, but reliably measuring that is going to be next to impossible. So I don't want to disagree with you per se, I think it's important to recognize that exporting industries is not, per se, solving climate change. But I thin it's also important to recognize that solving climate change, in the early stages, probably does look a lot like just reshuffling things by country.

ZeroGravitas 6y ago

This has been studied and it doesn't actually change the big picture much. https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-importers-exporters https://www.carbonbrief.org/mapped-worlds-largest-co2-import... US up 6%, China down 10% for example. But, yes, to accurately track responsibility this adjustment should be made or else unethical people will have an incentive to shift production to lax regimes. One mildly surprising aspect is that countries that export fossil fuels show up here, even if you count the burning on the importer side. This is because the drilling and mining has carbon impacts on top of the burning.

pldr1234 6y ago
That seems highly inaccurate.

IvanK_net 6y ago

There are also many products manufactured in the UK and exported to China, which are not counted as chinese CO2 emissions. And I don't mean just expensive cars like Bentley, Land Rover or Jaguar. British industry is quite huge. E.g. all airplanes used in China were manufactured in Europe or the US, so you could say "China is outsourcing their industry to Europe and the US to keep their CO2 emissions low".

kitd 6y ago

You're undoubtedly correct, but the situation is extremely nuanced. I found the conclusion from this article [1] very interesting Territorial emissions accounting might not be perfect, Mabey says, but in terms of simplicity it is the more practical approach. Lord Deben, chair of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change, told the BBC the UK only has direct control over its home-grown emissions, whereas manufacturing methods and energy choices in China are outside our control. Barrett says consumption accounting brings additional information to the table, but agrees there’s no need to abandon territorial accounting methods. Instead, he says consumption emissions highlight how hard it is to decouple emissions from economic growth. That’s why many commentators were so surprised that carbon emissions stalled in 2014, even as the global economy expanded. For a good chance of limiting warming to below two degrees, the challenge of decoupling emissions from growth will have to be cracked. Countries control what they can measure, which is where we are currently. However, fixing climate change requires a completely coherent and coordinated global response, which will have hugely implications for economic growth. Essentially, our economic & political models won't allow us to apply the fix we really need. Without that, we are left with countries trying to do the best they can individually. [1] - https://www.carbonbrief.org/are-the-uks-emissions-really-falling-or-has-it-outsourced-them-to-china https://www.carbonbrief.org/are-the-uks-emissions-really-fal...

zajio1am 6y ago

> 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. It is not that products from China are shippped to UK without any countervalue in opposite direction. If UK lowers its per-dollar emissions and other countries not, then UK necessarily imports more 'dirtier' products, but exports 'cleaner'. If you account it by production, then you see UK is cleaner and other countries not, if you account it by consumption, then you see all countries are a bit cleaner (based on how they consume UK goods). Accounting by production makes more sense as governments have much more control about production in their countries.

mc32 6y ago

So will they in turn normalize the historical output as well if some of it was exported and consumed elsewhere and assign it to where it was consumed? I mean if you do it one way, you have to do it the other way too.

plq 6y ago

So can we say that now that the heavy industry has been moved offshore, lowering CO2 emissions won't make as much of an impact on local British jobs? If so the next step should be to analyze the CO2 footprint of the country and start taking steps in reducing that number instead. Eg. banning ICE vehicles would help big time I guess.

thinkcontext 6y ago

This is a good argument for a carbon border tax. But in general I think you are overstating the impact of CO2 emissions policy on UK deindustrialization. That process began well before any CO2 policies were in place, with labor costs and scale being far larger factors.

christkv 6y ago

I've always argued this point that it would have been better if production had stayed in the west as it would have been cleaner by now than what happens in China.

glitchc 6y ago

What a terrible comment for such a positive development. It completely ignores UK's massive efforts in switching away from coal-fired plants to other alternatives, such a huge undertaking. For reference: The current population in the UK is an estimated 66 million. The population in 1890 was 10 million. Therefore the current energy infrastructure supports 6x the population at the same carbon emissions rate. That's an amazing achievement and doesn't even take into consideration how much more electricity-dependent the average 2019 UKer is compared to the 1890 UKer. So what if China produces goods in a dirty manner? How is this the UK's problem? This is a classic case of moving the goalposts. The UK has achieved carbon emission reductions without negatively impacting the standard of living, but of course that is not sufficient for the climate activists, is it, as it is the modern standard of living that they truly have an issue with. Perhaps the climate activitists don't realize is that most of the population doesn't want to live "one with nature", and we are extremely loath to give up the creature comforts of modern urban living. Much of climate moralizing nowadays reminds me of the Temperance League at the turn of the century.

bitdizzy 6y ago
If the standard of living in the UK depends on imports from countries that heavily emit CO2's, then in what sense has the UK achieved a modern standard of living at a low rate of CO2 emissions? How did you turn a comment on method of accounting into a screed against "modern standard of living" and for living "one with nature"?
- glitchc 6y ago
  Let me turn that question around: Is the UK supposed to turn away from global trade and become an isolated, self-sufficient nation just to meet its climate commitments? Do you require that of every nation on the planet? Or should the UK impose its policies and laws on other nations? Do you prefer that model?
  - bobthepanda 6y ago
    Carbon taxes on both domestic products and imported ones, and rebating consumers a fixed amount per person would be a good start.