PowerSwitch

Our government have announced plans to reduce UK carbon emissions by 78% by 2035, considerably quicker than the originally proposed date of 2050.

I suspect that most of the population are completely unaware of the scale of changes needed to achieve this.
I cynically suspect that the target will be met largely by trading and offsetting, rather than by an actual physical reduction in fuel used.

This is a big change, specifically:

For the first time, the Sixth Carbon Budget will also include emissions from international aviation and shipping...

Yes, the changes are huge and it will involve everything 'working' in a way that seems highly unlikely.

I would like to know if the UK counts imports of goods manufactured overseas as part of the carbon budget. I would guess that a fairly substantial part of the carbon emission reductions are due to this alone. I know there has been a lot of progress in solar and wind installations but the fact of closing coal plants and replacing them with gas fired also accounts for a reduction. Problem is that both of the reduction techniques have placed the UK in a more precarious position regarding material and energy imports and have just shifted the emissions elsewhere.

For example, cement production is a large emitter of CO2. I could not find UK cement production stats but I could find that cement imports into the UK increased by 70% from 2005 to 2019. Did the UK production fall accordingly so that consumption was level? Will the CO2 produced by those imports be counted in the Carbon Budget?

Full credit to the ambition to do this reduction but it needs to be a bit better thought out and applied.

Why precisely 78% and not a round 80%? Was 80% thought to be too much and 75% too little?

I do agree that people and the government don't realise what will be necessary to achieve that figure. We achieved a 7% reduction in energy use under covid lockdown but the IEA expect that to be regained this year and exceeded when air travel resumes later. So there is no government effort to keep emissions down. On the contrary they seem to be encouraging the resumption of BAU.

We can but hope for the future.

adam2 wrote: ↑20 Apr 2021, 19:16 Our government have announced plans to reduce UK carbon emissions by 78% by 2035, considerably quicker than the originally proposed date of 2050.

Another load of bojobollocks with a tsunami of this sort of superficially impressive sounding old guff coming down the tracks
between now and the COP in Glasgow.

I strongly suspect that most politicians and most voters don't know the difference between "energy" and "electricity" They look at the progress made in renewable electricity generation, and ignore the FF used for transport and domestic heating.

I also suspect that most of the "progress" will be made by trading and offsetting, rather than actual physical reductions in fossil fuel use.
Carbon offsetting rather reminds me of the former Church practice of selling "indulgences" whereby sins could be wiped out or canceled for a sum of money.

If we are actually going to reduce fuel used by 78% then that would in effect mean the end of civil aviation and of private cars, unless electric.
More likely is that flying will continue as normal provided that the airlines purchase enough indulgences.

Worth remembering UK emissions were already some 44% down (before Covid) since 1990. The long term changes triggered by Covid will help, as will electric cars, heat pumps, more RE, etc. It's a big ask, a step change in ambition but not impossible in a 'perfect world'.

"The US has vowed to cut its planet-heating emissions by at least half by the end of the decade, in a ramping up of ambition aimed at rallying other countries to do more to confront the climate crisis."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... 2030-biden

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this fantastical stuff.

That should be pretty easy for the US. It's half from 2005, they've *lots* of coal to cut in that period and they can half surface transport carbon by just swapping to European efficiency ICE, EV only help more.

US plan is equivalent to -43% from their 1990 baseline. So not nearly as ambitious as UK (-78%), from 1990.

However, the US is also equivalent to a 47% from 2018, compared with -46% form '18 for UK.

Both countries are pledging similar from today - far more achievable for the US than UK.