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UK becomes first G20 country to halve its carbon emissions
- DrBazza 3y agoEmissions shift with manufacturing. And for Western countries that means outsourcing to China.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoSo much this. Is there anywhere where we can see emissions by what is consumed rather than what is produced? It's pure politics to outsource everything to China and India then complain that they're the biggest culprits.
- iamthemonster 3y agoIt's easy to google this data, see Figure 1 on this link, from official UK statistics: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uks-carbon-footprint/carbon-footprint-for-the-uk-and-england-to-2019 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/uks-carbon-footprin...
- varispeed 3y ago[flagged]
- midasuni 3y agoIt is mentioned in the article and they include figures. I’m not convinced by the reliability of those figures, given the carbon intensity of the imports (from a higher carbon grid in China and from the transport) Other sources put U.K. imports at 30% of total energy use, but you need to include the environmental impact too. Better to import 100MWh of goods from Iceland or Norway than 10MWh from China or India.
- verve_rat 3y agoThe narrative that manufacturing was outsourced to China and India and those same were then blamed for carbon emissions removes agency from China and India. If they want manufacturing industry, then they should acknowledge the externalities that come with that.
- AlecSchueler 3y agoBut we want the things they manufacture. I'm arguing for sharing the agency, not putting it all on the UK and others. The climate doesn't care about borders. There's a global demand for manufacturing, we just don't want it in our own backyards.
- throw0101b 3y ago> Is there anywhere where we can see emissions by what is consumed rather than what is produced? https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
- midasuni 3y agoThey do address that and mention consumption, and the U.K. is down 32% including import, second to Italy.
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoIn general, this isn't as big a difference as many claim. On the other hand, the UK is probably an outlier in this regard and exhibits one of the largest such effects, so the reduction given as 50% in the article is more like 35% once imports are accounted for. Some comparitive graphs in this article: https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling
- throw0101b 3y ago> Emissions shift with manufacturing. And for Western countries that means outsourcing to China. Consumption-based emissions are also down for the UK from a peak of 750 Mt down to 500 Mt: * https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
- _3u10 3y agoChinese people get paid a lot less so they have a much smaller carbon footprint. It’s an environmental and economic win-win situation.
- kingkongjaffa 3y ago1. It's behind a paywall so if others have a link that would be great 2. The UK is (now) almost [80% services industries](https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity/output/articles/fivefactsabouttheukservicesector/2016-09-29 https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproductivity...) not building anything. 3. With that in mind it's kind of bad it's taken us this long to get to 50% of the 1970 output.
- Luc 3y agoPrepend archive.is/ to the URL. The images are cut off but you can open them in a new tab to see the whole image. I would also recommend https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions . You can compare the UK to other countries. It seems to be doing rather well (though it has huge historical emissions), e.g. the UK is at 4.6 tonnes CO2 per person, while Germany is at 8.
- mpweiher 3y agoWell, Germany is doing particularly horribly. The "Energiewende" was a huge failure, due to its reliance on Russian Gas, even before the Russian Gas thing blew up in our faces and we had to scramble to buy up all the gas on the international market.
- adrianN 3y agoIn what way was it a failure? CO2 per kWh had been going down steadily. Germany just built less renewables than the UK.
- mpweiher 3y agoCoal use went UP the last two years, not down. This year it's down, in part due to the recession reducing overall demand. And the recession is in large part due to high energy prices. Germany has the 2nd highest electricity prices in the EU. AND the 2nd highest CO2 emissions per unit of energy. That's after 20 years of "Energiewende". If that isn't a failure, I don't know what is. And yes, emissions do go down. It's just that "yes, renewables produce some electricity some of the time" is not exactly success.
- ricardo81 3y agoAs noted in another comment, some of this can be attributed to manufacturing being done elsewhere and the UK becoming more of a service economy. Though there are indicators like emissions per kWh of electricity generated that show promise. https://grid.iamkate.com/ https://grid.iamkate.com/ ... over the past 10 years the value has went from 475g of CO2 per kWh to ~153g. A contentious part of that value no doubt is that biomass imported from North America is considered carbon neutral. Add in the complications of new growth vs old growth, transportation and the time-sensitive nature of man-made climate change it can perhaps be seen as less advantageous as figures may suggest. All the same I'm optimistic, particularly in Scotland where a disproportionate amount of green electricity is harvested by population. Our National Grid is playing catch up trying to accommodate intermittent sources and price accordingly.
- londons_explore 3y ago> Our National Grid is playing catch up Nah - they're thinking of playing catch-up in 5-10 years time when they've done the paperwork to get permission to start catching up...
- midasuni 3y agoBiomass is a small impact. The next big impact will be ever increasing wind power and the shift from gas to electric for heating.
- ricardo81 3y agoDrax which burns biomass is self-styled as "the UK's largest renewable power station"
- midasuni 3y agoRight now it’s generating less power than Solar - in the depth of winter, 8% Gas is 50% higher at 12% and that doesn’t include the gas usage in keeping homes warm Wind (32%) imports and nuclear are all higher than gas for the electricity generation, let alone imported wood generation.
- rjknight 3y agohttps://archive.is/AHFlh https://archive.is/AHFlh
- markburns 3y agoNot read past the paywall. Could anyone let me know if this statement is clarified? > no politicians likely to trumpet it Irrespective of whether or not it's outsourcing to China and so not quite the truth, I can't see why politicians wouldn't lay claim to it. Isn't it their modus operandi to find positive news they could attribute to their own efforts?
- midasuni 3y agoThis government is leaning heavily into culture wars, they are unlikely to attach themselves to something they are painting as “woke” (cleaner air in school playgrounds, lack of smog, etc)
- OscarCunningham 3y agoThe current government is very unpopular, but they won a small by-election by opposing London's ultra low emissions zone. So they're now shifting to an anti-environmental stance in the hope that will save them in the next election (they were hardly pro-environment previously).
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoThis is probably down more to the lack of overlap between people who care about carbon accounting and those who celebrate petty jingoistic "victories" like being the first nation in the G20 to achieve collectively agreed targets.
- 93po 3y agoOften there's an archive.whateverTLD link in comments, there's one here: https://archive.is/AHFlh https://archive.is/AHFlh
- mellosouls 3y agoCan't read due to paywall but maybe worth pointing out this is seemingly an opinion piece by the editor of this conservative and climate-skeptic magazine. I did a quick Google and couldn't find a more neutral news item with appropriate context so I'll be taking the headline with a pinch of salt until that.
- midasuni 3y agoFor those unaware and to give an idea of leanings, the magazine used to be edited by Boris Johnson. The tone of the article is very much “climate change is a problem but the U.K. is a tiny amount of it and it won’t be impacted by the U.K. magically cutting all emissions, the only influence the U.K. has is in showing emissions can be cut, and it’s doing a good job on that. It also mentions cuts to use of fertiliser and other non co2 issues To be fair it’s a solid point.
- dan-robertson 3y agoTo be fair to Boris, he did push a reasonable amount on various green issues, set some long term policies, targets, etc, while he was pm.
- youngtaff 3y agoYeh, but reducing CO2 emissions generally also results in the reduction of other pollutants so it’s still worthwhile doing to get cleaner air Plus switching to non-fossil fuel energy sources reduces dependency on the Middle East autocracies
- 6stringmerc 3y agoIt’s quite impressive how financially penalizing automobile use like in London - sure you can drive as long as you lop off a testicle for His Majesty - and they also have a significant train system. Eventually the math will work its way to the point where Nations will have to admit their Airlines are the biggest polluters in their purview and it will be hard conversation. Frankly there’s a very easy avenue to significantly address two issues: Emissions and Global Pilot Shortages In 2024 if passenger aviation went down by 25% in the United States the GDP would improve by a statistically noticeable amount. I should write an article about this…3rd generation aviator (no license due to handicap)
- adrianN 3y agoMaybe eventually, but afaik aviation is something like 4% of emissions currently. A lot, but not our biggest concern. Probably also not the area where you get the biggest CO2 reduction per money invested.
- est31 3y agoYour figure is accurate for the global scale. In the USA it's also around 3%. In the UK, it's 8% though: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/28/scientists-uk-aviation-net-zero-ambitions-half-farmland-double-renewable-electricity https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/feb/28/scientists-...
- Closi 3y agoThis is right in percentage terms - but also worth noting that the UK produces 4.7 tonnes of co2 per capita vs USA's 14.4 metric tons per capita. i.e. taking your 8% and 3% figures along with the tonnes of co2 above would mean in raw CO2 terms, the USA is producing more tonnes of aviation carbon per capita (i.e. per person) than the UK. The UK would be at 2.6% if it consumed 'other carbon' at USA rates (i.e. 14.4 metric tons per capita), but it is 8% because it consumed 4.7 tonnes per capita.
- closewith 3y agoThe USA excludes international aviation emissions while the UK includes them in their figure (the only country to do so). Domestic UK aviation emissions are tiny.
- dumbaccount123 3y ago[dead]
- __natty__ 3y agoThat's pretty cool. Now I'm waiting for India and China.
- andrepd 3y agoIndia and China manufacture the goods that the developed world wants. You can't just shift your carbon-intensive industry overseas and then go smirking smugly about how those developing nations emit so much. If you want to be honest, a good metric is CO2 per capita for goods consumed, not manufactured.
- verve_rat 3y agoIf you go wholly off of consumption then you remove responsibility for the manufacturing to improve. Turns out the world is one giant complex system, there are no simple answers.
- dumbaccount123 3y ago[dead]
- ViewTrick1002 3y agoChina is the world leader in building out renewables. They are ahead.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoThis. China built more wind in 2023 than total UK generating capacity, and more solar than total US solar generating capacity.
- martyvis 3y agoWhile a little orthogonal to this, Tom Scott's latest video [1] with him climbing a power transmission tower concludes with discussion as to how the generating sources have gradually been moving from the centre of the country, away from coal mine fuelled generators to nuclear, gas and wind generation near the coast. [1] https://youtu.be/F0JDK_71yDg?si=XkJZBFH4nVR0GBTV https://youtu.be/F0JDK_71yDg?si=XkJZBFH4nVR0GBTV
- manojlds 3y agoIt was interesting to visit Battersea Power Station in London...which is now a mall.
- tialaramex 3y agoLondon's fossil fuel power stations hadn't actually produced power for decades. Their redevelopment (as the Tate Modern art gallery in Bankside, and as a mixed development with a mall in Battersea, not to mention housing developments in several more sites) is more recent, but I think they were all shut in the 1980s or earlier.
- mpweiher 3y agoNo mention of France, who have lower emissions. They just never went up as much, because they converted to nuclear much earlier.
- adrianN 3y agoFrance is currently reducing the share of nuclear in favor of renewable energy. They don’t plan to build enough new reactors to even replace what they currently have and electricity demand will increase a lot in the future as transportation, heating and industry are switched away from fossil fuels.
- mpweiher 3y agoThis was the plan a couple of years ago. Didn't work out, so it is no longer the plan. They are still investing somewhat in renewables, mostly off-shore wind, but the focus has shifted back to nuclear expansion.
- adrianN 3y agoOh yeah? How many new reactors are they planning to build in the next twenty years? How many reach EOL in that time?
- mpweiher 3y agoOh yeah? Oh yeah! 6 initially, 8 more after that. And they will extend the life of their existing fleet. "Macron calls for nuclear 'renaissance' to end the France's reliance on fossil fuels" https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/11/macron-calls-for-nuclear-renaissance-to-end-the-france-s-reliance-on-fossil-fuels https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/02/11/macron-calls-for-n... "At COP28, Countries Launch Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy Capacity by 2050, Recognizing the Key Role of Nuclear Energy in Reaching Net Zero" https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-declaration-triple-nuclear-energy-capacity-2050-recognizing-key https://www.energy.gov/articles/cop28-countries-launch-decla...
- londons_explore 3y agoThis figure likely came at a large cost to the economy. GDP/capita isn't looking good compared to the rest of the western world... Turns out when you tell everyone they have to sit in a barely-heated house and shouldn't drive their car or fly, GDP goes down. Eg. https://twitter.com/MortenORavn/status/1538160446150156292 https://twitter.com/MortenORavn/status/1538160446150156292
- adrianN 3y agoDid GDP go down 50%? I don’t think so.
- londons_explore 3y agono - far from it. But any GDP loss today compounds over generations.
- closewith 3y agoWhat an odd mix of short and long term thinking. Obviously the destruction of the environment will also have a compounding effect on GDP over generations.
- LargeTomato 3y agoYup, so we're trading one thing for another. Nothing is so cut and dry.
- closewith 3y agoWell, there might be other externalities not captured by GDP as a result of destroying the environment. Further comment would involve breaching HN guidelines.
- mytailorisrich 3y agoThis is indeed the typical spin article. While in itself it is good that emissions are going down, most of the underlying reasons and explanations for this 50% drop are actually negative or unrelated to "environmental progress".
- Brthrw 3y agoIf this is what victory looks like I'll take the rising sea please.
- piuantiderp 3y agoIf you have to be told that you are "akstually winning!" then it's a very sad win, if any at all.
- ilikehurdles 3y agoNobody in the general sense is better off but let’s all celebrate because some bureaucrats’ climate targets were met. Degrowth is a suicide cult.
- novolunt 3y agoWhy don't you talk about the British nuclear leakage that caused severe nuclear pollution in European waters? The British are really smart. They control the world's media and say the best about everything, but they are the initiators of the current geopolitical disputes around the world.
- hbrav 3y agoWell you seem to feel very strongly about it, so I assume you'd be a good person to tell us about these leaks. Do you have data / links you want to provide?
- gumballindie 3y agoThe uk does have a problem with massaging statistics. Healthcare being one. I wouldnt be surprised if the same happened with co2 emissions.
- petesergeant 3y ago> The British … control the world's media With our secret mind rays from our lizard king, yes
- phantomathkg 3y agoCan you back it up with some sources on the following 3 points? * nuclear * control of the media * starter of geopolitical disputes.
- 10xDev 3y agoThe UK doesn't think for itself much anymore when it comes to geopolitical disputes. They copy the decision making of the US almost always. Have a look at this: https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/INTERACTIVE-war-of-words-Dec3-2023-3-1701604317.png https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/INTERAC...
- muhaaa 3y agoWhen UK exported its industry to China and imports the stuff it needs from China then yeah the CO2 emitted in UK halfed. When you add the CO2 emissions happing in China which are related to UK consumption then the number wont be impressive at all.
- dan-robertson 3y agoCan you write down what you think the number would be?
- throw0101b 3y ago> When you add the CO2 emissions happing in China which are related to UK consumption then the number wont be impressive at all. Consumption-based emissions are also down for the UK from a peak of 750 Mt down to 500 Mt: * https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 33% is still pretty good.
- palemoonale 3y agoWhat is the source of the fascination of this site's visitors with renewables, carbon dioxide, EVs, climate activism and the like? The same visitors who are responsible for a ton of annual electronics waste, and millions of kW/h wasted for hosting their toy apps in clouds?
- ricardo81 3y agoI'm using a PC I bought 7 years ago. My phone is also 7 years old. I use less than the national average household amount for energy, and don't drive. Think maybe your generalisation is a bit wide of the mark.
- traceroute66 3y ago[flagged]
- fbdrgvv 3y ago[dead]
- dan-robertson 3y agoIsn’t the current government’s position that the green policies (from the ~previous government…) were bad and should be undone. Doing well at emissions reduction is maybe not something the government would want to see applauded?
- rjsw 3y agoThe subtext could be that emissions are down so it will be fine to "max out" North Sea oil production.
- rodlette 3y agohttps://paulgraham.com/disagree.html https://paulgraham.com/disagree.html calls this level of critique "DH1. Ad Hominem.". > Of course he would say that. He's a senator. > Of course [they] would say that. [They're Tory leaning].
- traceroute66 3y ago> Of course [they] would say that. [They're Tory leaning]. Except this bit is true. Post-Brexit, the incumbent Tory government has been desperate to frame everything in a "UK first" or "Great British" light, even if it is patently not true or some massaging of the data is required to make it appear so. Therefore, whilst I am not necessarily disputing the headline statement, the point I am making is that it would have been nice to see a link to an impartial, independent website (preferably with raw data attached) rather than a known Tory-leaning rag. And in relation to emissions in particular, just look at the way the present government fought the Uxbridge by-election on the basis of a complete pack of scaremongering lies about ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone). That was in August 2023, and a leopard doesn't change its spots.
- DataDaemon 3y ago"to halve it's carbon emissions... and the economy". Congrats UK, soon carbon free with people on the streets.
- asdajksah2123 3y agoThe ridiculous and incompetent Tories of today might be changing this, but historically the UK has been fairly unique in that even their right wing party (the Conservative party) are fairly pro green policies. Conservation of the environment in the UK has been considered a Conservative party tradition and the UK Conservatives did not find it difficult to shift from environmental conservation at the local level to the global level (i.e. also acting against climate change). In fact, Boris Johnson was one of the biggest promoters of rewilding and reducing emissions. Unfortunately the political incompetents running the Conservative party today have taken the result of a single local issue in a single election where they did pretty badly but did not do as badly as the worst case scenario and decided that it means the British public is for worse transit, worse environmental policies, and less government incentive to reduce energy costs and greening the grid. I'm hopeful that whenever this ridiculous conservative party is forced to call an election (within the next year or so), the larger British public will punish them for it and get rid of the trash that has taken over the party.
- doingtheiroming 3y agoReading the comments, it seems that absolutely no one is happy about this. It is either a lie, insufficient or a pointless response to a non-problem. But it’s a clear achievement. An achievement with lots of nuance. And one that runs counter to many strongly held and arguably ideological positions on all sides of the political spectrum. Reading responses to it here and on Twitter has been rather depressing.
- burkaman 3y agoLike it or not (and I don't like it), that is the culture of this website. Positive comments are actively discouraged, and even if you want to make one they are difficult to write. To criticize you only need to find one thing wrong, but to substantively support you really need to understand the whole subject.
- s1artibartfast 3y agoIn my opinion, there has also been an eternal summer effect following the reddit protests, which manifests as 1) more anti-curious doomerism and joke comments
- alephnerd 3y agoI feel the pandemic also changed the tone on here, though the Reddit protest definetly made things worse on here.
- bitcharmer 3y agoI guarantee you if that was USA the comments would be much more positive. HN is as biased and indoctrinated as Reddit simply because Americans are the largest group of commenters here
- ZeroGravitas 3y agoIt's not helped that the messenger is a highly polarising source that piggybacks on the facts to a) attack the mainstream media as unpatriotic liars and b) downplay the severity of climate change that they've been actively denying, because of the success of policies they've actively fought against at every turn.
- orenlindsey 3y agoGood on them. More countries should follow.
- ascorbic 3y agoThe UK has made good progress with renewables, but measuring from a peak 1970 the overwhelming majority of that is going to be down to the move away from coal. In 1970, most power generation and home heating used coal. Even cooking used coal gas. Oil and gas were found in the North Sea in the 1970s, the coal industry was killed by Thatcher in the 1980s and the privatised energy companies moved most power generation to gas during the 90s. The biggest remaining coal-fired power station (Drax) was converted to biomass in the past decade.
- piuantiderp 3y agoTLDR; people in the UK are poorer by half.
- okeuro49 3y agoWas recently reading about new Viking Link interconnect between UK and Denmark. Scheduled to come online soon. https://www.viking-link.com/ https://www.viking-link.com/