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Carbon Efficiency – UK Net Emissions Consumption (Imports Included)

Posted on March 24, 2020March 24, 2020

In February, we released an article to highlight cuts to UK emissions resulting from changes in power generation practices – namely, switching from coal to a combination of gas and renewables.  The source link provided in that article referenced a dataset (1990-2018), released by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

For this article, a further dataset (1990-2017) is used, released by the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA).  Importantly it also considers emissions embedded within imports.  In contrast to the BEIS dataset (which purports a 43% emissions reduction between 1990-2018), total UK emissions when considering those imports fell to a lesser degree, by 16%.

Further observations using this dataset are provided in an article published by The University of Manchester.  The author considers the datapoints between 1997-2016, where the data is considered more reliable.  In brief, whilst GHG emissions from UK production fell, a large part of this was offset by an increase in the consumption of imports:

  • UK production emissions – down 35% (431-282m tCO2e)
  • Embedded import emissions – up 43% (277-355m tCO2e)
  • Household emissions – down 12% (89-78m tCO2e)
  • Road transport emissions – up 6% (65-69m tCO2e)

At the very least, this highlights how different datasets and ranges can be used/manipulated to obfuscate simple truths.  Offshoring emissions does not make them unaccountable.  Reviving national resources and the UK production industry with a focus on minimising emissions intensity will help to deliver the UK’s net zero ambition, and in the process create a valuable export – the know-how.

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