After a decrease of more than thirty years, British CO2 emissions are back to the level of 1879, according to an analysis by an expert site Carbon Brief. That was the year in which Thomas Edison applied for a patent on the light bulb in England and drove a (horse-drawn) tram for the first time in Utrecht. How did the British get this far? And how are they doing in relation to the Netherlands and the EU?
The British are twice as far as the Netherlands
- British emissions have fallen twice as fast as Dutch emissions since 1990
- An average Briton emits half as much CO2 as a Dutch person
- The UK has almost twice as much renewable energy as the Netherlands
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The United Kingdom has the same ultimate goal as the European Union: to be completely climate neutral by 2050. But last year the British chose a more ambitious intermediate target for 2030: their emissions must then 68 percent below 1990 levels, rather than European ones 55 percent.
Still, they will have less trouble meeting their more ambitious 2030 target.
UK greenhouse gas emissions were 51 percent below our 1990 levels last year 24.5 percent. This picture also remains true in absolute figures: an average Briton emits 4.5 tons of CO2 annually, a Dutch person about twice as much. The EU average is somewhere in between.
It is striking that the United Kingdom, as a rich industrial country, is now exactly on the global average. The emissions of the average Briton are therefore also lower than those of the average Chinese (but still almost three times as high as those of an average inhabitant of India).
The coal era began and ended in the United Kingdom
You could say that the British come from afar. Coal mining in England and Wales was the start of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century. The peak in British CO2 emissions followed much later, in 1973. Even then, the British economy was still heavily dependent on coal.
That time is long gone. The last coal-fired power station in the United Kingdom is planned to close in 2024 – six years earlier than in the Netherlands.
The remaining coal-fired power plants are almost no longer needed: last year coal supplied only 1.6 percent of UK electricity. This is partly due to the exceptionally low gas prices in 2020, which means that we also burned less coal in the Netherlands.
Left and right cabinets are continuing policy
Not windmills or nuclear power plants, but consistency is the British climate secret. Margaret Thatcher was still in power in 1990, after which right-wing and left-wing cabinets succeeded each other. If you look at the CO2 graph, it actually made no difference – it is showing a steady decline, which has accelerated strongly, especially since 2008.
The Netherlands stands out considerably: our CO2 emissions were up to 2018 still at the level of 1990. We did reduce ‘other greenhouse gases’, such as methane and nitrous oxide, but the British have in the meantime also been doing so.
CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom are back to the level of 1879. The black line shows the sharp decline in coal use since 1973.
CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom are back to the level of 1879. The black line shows the sharp decline in coal use since 1973. Photo: CarbonBrief
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2020 was a tipping point for British green electricity
The emphases have shifted in British climate policy. Initially, profit was made by tackling energy waste and partly switching from coal to gas-fired power stations.
Renewable energy is now driving the transition, and the use of oil and gas is also declining. Last year in the United Kingdom for the first time more electricity was generated from renewable energy than from fossil fuels. In the Netherlands, renewable energy provided a quarter of the electricity (11 percent of the total energy demand).
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