🔎 What’s going on?
UK emissions drop 29% over the last decade to 1888 levels, according to a study by Carbon Brief. Even though the economy grew by a fifth in that time.
🙌 Fantastic! How did we do that?
Well, there are six key sectors that we can reduce emissions from - energy generation, transport, buildings, agriculture, industry, and forestry. Almost all of the UK’s emissions reduction came from reducing coal power from the energy sector, by a whopping 80%! In 1990, 75% of the UK’s energy came from coal, in 2019 it was 2.1%. 👏 Let’s just take a minute to really, REALLY enjoy that progress.💓
A big reason for that is the rise in renewable energy (i.e. solar, wind, hydro and biomass). Last year the UK generated 38.9% energy from renewables. Going forward in the next decade (until 2030), there is still room to make improvements in the energy sector by increasing renewables, but the real opportunity is within transport. Yup, transport is the next biggest sector where the UK can make progress. In 2018, surface transport (i.e. cars, trucks, vans, buses and trains) accounted for 23% of the UK’s emissions.
❓Why should I care?
We are in a Climate Crisis. This means that average global temperatures have been rising drastically since the pre-industrial period (1850 - 1900), affecting almost everything we know and love today. The full effects of climate change are detailed here.
🚦 Where do we need to be?
Last year, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)’s Emissions Gap report confirmed that global emissions should be reduced by 7.6% each year, in order to stay within 1.5°C of temperature goal (as agreed by the Paris Agreement). Although the UK has reduced emissions by 2.9% in 2019, we are still far behind what’s actually required.
The good news is that the UK has just demonstrated that it is possible to cut emissions by almost 30% in a decade, we just need to raise that ambition in the coming decade and during the climate talks at COP26 later this year. We need to cut emissions by 45% before 2030 and be at zero emissions by 2050.
👤What can I do about it?
As Christiana Figueres (architect of the Paris Agreement) recently pointed out, individual actions definitely do matter. Along with industry actions and political will, of course.
The rule of thumb is a two-step approach:
- Measure: start by measuring your personal or household carbon footprint by visiting any one of these footprint calculators: WWF, Carbonfootprint.com, UN carbon footprint, ClimateCare, and CoolClimate.
- Reduce: then look to make changes that reduce your personal emissions by half.